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<^  PRINCETON,  N.  J.  *# 


Presented    bycjY^cS   \J\r\ \  \fcsr.S yV\-A  VV^S  S 

V<3 


Division 
Section 


TWENTY-FIFTH   ANNIVERSARY 


TWENTY-FIFTH      W°_;  JT  - 
ANNIVERSARY  ^^wuEtf^ 

RECORD    OF    THE    CELEBRATION    BY    THE 

£>o^©nOLD   SOUTH  CHURCH   AND   SOCIETY  OF 

THE    TWENTY-FIFTH   ANNIVERSARY 

OF  THE   INSTALLATION  AS  MINIS 

TER    OF    THE    OLD    SOUTH 

CHURCH    OF    REVEREND 

GEORGE  A.  GORDON,  D.D. 

APRIL,  MCMIX 


IMPRINTED  FOR  THE  OLD  SOUTH  SOCIETY 
BY  THE  UNIVERSITY  PRESS 


CONTENTS 


PAGE 


Sonnet  —  "  My  Friend  "  vii 

gmnbap  iHoming  &eririce 

Opening  Prayer  I 

Sermon  —  ' '  Our  Contemporaries  "  7 

Closing  Prayer  3i 

Hymn  —  ' '  Years  and  Aspirations  "  35 

itlonbar  Ctoemng  iWteting 

Hymn  —  "  The  Old  South  Church  "  4o 

Mr.  Hardy's  Welcome  hi 

Theological  Changes  of  a  Quarter  Century 

—  Professor  Walker  45 

The  Man  for  the  Pulpit  of  To-day  —  Pro- 
fessor Evans  67 

The  Puritan   Church  and  the  Puritan 

College  —  President  Eliot  79 

Informal  Reception  91 


CONTENTS 

PAGE 

©inner  gtoen  bv  tfje  0ih  g>outh  Club 

Hospitality  —  Mr.  Noyes  0,5 

Law  and  Gospel  —  Mr.  Justice  Hammond  99 

Christian  Amity,   A  Message  from  Sister 

Churches  —  Doctor  De  Normandie  io3 

Literature  and  Religion  —  Mr.  Perry  109 

Theology  and  Ethics  —  Professor  Palmer  117 

Pew  to  Pulpit  —  Mr.  Morss  127 

Retrospect  and  Prospect  —  Doctor  Gordon  i33 

List  of  Officers  i45 


MY   FRIEND 

W  HO  is  my  Friend  ?     The  man  with  vision  high 
Of  utmost  good  for  man,  and  self-subdued 
To  service  of  the  same,  with  soul  imbued 
In  sympathies  benign  ;   the  beaming  eye 
With  honor  bright,  and  overhead  the  sky 
Of  Faith  serene  and  vast ;  the  goal  pursued 
With  steadfast  step  ;   the  heart  that  will  not  lie. 
Who  is  my  Friend  ?     The  Life  that  side  by  side 
Marches  with  mine,  that  feels  the  wildness  near; 
That  weakness  in  me  knows  and  doth  not  chide  ; 
My  Brother  in  this  night  of  time  and  fear, 
Who  loves  me  in  my  sore  defeat ;   my  guide 
To  victory  ;   comrade  in  battle's  role  ! 
Howe'er  I  fare,  the  other  of  my  soul. 

[In  response  to  a  request  for  an  autograph  and  a  sentiment 
for  the  Menu  of  the  Anniversary  Dinner  Dr.  Gordon  wrote 
the  sonnet  "My  Friend."] 


g>tmbap  jfllornmg  feerbtce 

Efje  Jfourtfj  of  Spril,  Nineteen 
^unbreb  anb  j£ine 


PRAYER 


THIS    PRAYER    PRECEDED    THE    ANNIVERSARY    SERMON    ON 
SUNDAY    MORNING,     4    APRIL,     10,00, 


PRAYER 

ETERNAL  FATHER,  Ancient  of  Days,  Infinite 
Watcher  of  men,  whose  vision  is  the  austere  and  benign 
vision  of  perfect  love,  we,  the  children  of  thy  love 
on  our  pilgrimage  through  time,  resting  here  by  the 
way,  would  praise  thee  and  renew  our  being  from 
thine,  0  Perfect  Grace  and  Perfect  Truth.  We  be- 
hold, our  Father,  the  generations  and  the  races  of  men 
from  the  morning  of  the  world  until  now,  appearing 
in  the  light  of  thy  day,  toiling  for  a  few  hours  in  the 
fields  of  time,  and  passing  with  thy  light  still  upon 
them  under  the  shadow  of  death.  We  behold  those 
who  opposed  thy  will  and  whom  thou  didst  convince  of 
righteousness  through  their  sin,  and  we  have  hope  for 
them.  We  behold  those  who  through  ignorance  and 
unbelief  fell  by  the  way,  and  we  look  with  compassion 
upon  them.  We  behold  those  who  knew  thy  will  and 
did  it,  took  the  wages  thou  didst  appoint  them  and 
were  content,  who  made  the  world  beautiful  with  their 
brave  and  lovely  lives  and  passed  at  length  with  the 
light  of  thy  face  on  their  brow  to  meet  thee  in  the  awe 
and  greatness  of  thy  eternal  world.  We  see  again, 
our  Father,  the  seven  generations  of  thy  people  who 
have  served  thy  kingdom  through  this  church  — 
preachers  and    their  people,    ministers  and  servants 


[4] 

together  of  the  cause  of  Christ  —  and  we  thank  thee 
for  their  faith,  their  love,  their  service  and  their  hope. 
We  see  again  those  with  whom  we  have  served  here  — 
perhaps  bone  of  our  bone  and  flesh  of  our  flesh ;  and 
if  not  bound  to  us  by  the  ties  of  the  flesh,  bound  to  us 
by  the  greater  ties  of  the  spirit.  We  think  of  them 
and  their  finished  work  and  their  peace  in  thy  presence 
this  morning.  0  Father,  bring  to  bear  upon  us  now 
the  whole  of  thy  hallowed  eternity  and  touch  the  mo- 
ments as  they  fly  with  depth,  with  dignity,  with  austere 
beauty,  fill  them  with  contentment  and  devotion  to  thy 
ivill;  make  them  moments  so  full  of  thy  Holy  Spirit 
that  all  the  days  that  are  appointed  for  us  may  be 
better  days. 

We  thank  thee  for  the  years  that  are  in  our  mem- 
ory to-day;  for  the  fellowship  of  lives  together  in  this 
church,  in  faith,  in  service,  in  discipline,  in  pain,  in 
joy,  and  in  unlimited  hope.  We  thank  thee  for  the 
enrichment  that  has  come  to  us  in  our  fellowship  one 
with  another — the  deeper  respect  as  we  have  known 
each  other  better,  the  profounder  consideration,  the 
richer  and  finer  sympathy,  the  loftier  regard.  We 
thank  thee  that  through  our  life  together  thou  hast  re- 
vealed thyself  in  thy  Son,  and  us  one  to  the  other. 
And  we  bless  thee  that  we  may  hope  for  other  days 
still  of  such  fellowship  and  service.  We  commend  to 
thy  care,  in  Christian  faith  and  in  dear  regard,  the 
persons,  the  souls,  the  families  of  this  church  and 
congregation. 

Oh,   be  with  us  in  our  inmost  life;  give  us  that 


[5] 
love,  divine  and  human,  without  which  our  existence 
is  poor  and  miserable.  We  thank  thee  for  the  treas- 
ure thou  hast  given  us  in  our  homes.  Keep  it  from 
sordidness ;  keep  it  from  becoming  common  under  the 
evil  custom  of  the  world ;  keep  it  fresh  and  clean  and 
dear,  and  make  it  more  and  more  beautiful;  make 
our  inmost  hearts  faithful  in  those  homes  and  ever 
more  grateful ;  and  cause  them  to  bloom,  especially  at 
this  springtime,  cause  them  to  bloom  anew  with  graces 
—  the  unfading  graces  of  thy  Spirit.  May  all  our 
possessions  in  human  friendship  and  in  our  human 
homes  be  hallowed  by  the  thought  that  they  are  ours  only 
for  a  little  while  —  till  death  us  do  part.  And  may 
we  so  live  and  so  hold  our  treasure  now  and  here, 
serve  with  such  large  and  disinterested  minds,  such 
brave  and  such  good  wills,  stand  so  high  and  trustful 
in  thy  compassion  that  when  we  are  borne  through 
death  into  that  glorious  life  beyond,  we  shall  meet 
again  in  greater  love  and  vaster  service. 

Hear  our  prayer  for  the  dead.  May  we  feel  the 
sanctity  and  awe  of  their  presence  now.  May  we  be 
richer  and  loftier  because  of  our  assurance  of  their 
sympathy  and  perpetual  compassion.  Hear  our  prayer 
for  all  the  interests  that  are  dear  to  the  disciples  of 
Christ  :  our  city,  our  Commonwealth ;  our  whole 
human  race.  Be  with  all  peoples  and  all  governments ; 
be  with  thy  servant,  the  President  of  the  United  States, 
and  all  with  him  in  authority.  Continue  to  guide  us, 
0  God,  and  may  thy  ministers,  the  ministers  of  the 
Gospel  of  Christ,   be  so  wise,    so  pure-hearted,    so 


[6] 

clean-handed  and  so  brave  that  they  shall  speak  in 
concert  and  with  might  the  things  that  concern  the 
kingdom  of  God  in  the  nation  and  be  heard  by  the 
people  with  gladness.  Continue  with  us  ivhile  we  wait 
upon  thee  this  hour.  Hear  the  prayer  that  cannot  be 
spoken ;  record  for  us  the  significance  of  the  memories 
that  cannot  be  uttered  —  the  food  of  life  within  us, 
deep,  happy,  ineffable.  And  answer  our  life  out  of 
thy  greatness,  and  bring  us  together  into  the  vision 
and  peace  of  Jesus  Christ,  our  Lord,  in  whose  Name 
we  offer  our  prayer,  Amen. 


SERMON 


THIS     SERMON     WAS     PREACHED     BY     DR.     GORDON     IN     THE 

OLD    SOUTH    CHURCH    AT    THE    MORNING    SERVICE, 

4    APRIL,    I9O9 


OUR  CONTEMPORARIES 


Others  have  labored,  and  te  are  entered  into  their  labor." 

—  John  iv.   38. 


IN  the  fields  of  the  spirit  sowing  and  reaping 
go  on  together;  we  reap  what  others  have 
sown;  we  sow  what  others  shall  reap.  In 
any  generation  of  men  independence  is  always 
wanting,  completeness  is  never  present.  The 
generations  stand  to  one  another  in  a  vast  soli- 
darity;  every  great  idea,  every  noble  enterprise 
has  a  history.  Tradition  is  a  splendid  word  de- 
graded in  the  ignoble  custom  of  the  world.  Fire 
has  been  put  out  by  a  line  of  men  running  from 
the  flames  down  to  the  river  from  which  pails  of 
water  were  drawn  and  passed  from  man  to  man 
till  poured  by  the  last  man  upon  the  conflagra- 
tion. Such  handing  onward,  such  passing  down, 
such  tradition  from  generation  to  generation  is 
essential  to  the  continuance  of  civilized  society. 
Human  life  is  itself  the  great  tradition;  it  is 
handed  down  through  parenthood  ;  and  when  the 
parenthood  is  worthy  the  tradition  is  divine.  All 
our  best  ideas  upon  all  subjects  are  an  inheritance 
and  an  expansion.  When  at  our  best  we  make 
clearer  and  completer  what  we  have  received,  we 


[IO] 

pass  on  to  those  who  shall  come  after  us  a  world 
of  thought  in  its  infancy  to  be  raised  to  maturity 
and  power.  In  this  vast  tradition  we  stand  in  a 
threefold  order,  as  predecessors,  as  contempora- 
ries, as  successors.  We  who  are  here  to-day  are 
successors  to  those  who  preceded  us  ;  we  are  pred- 
ecessors to  those  who  shall  by  and  by  occupy 
our  places ;  we  are  contemporaries  in  possession 
of  our  world  for  a  few  great  hours. 

On  this  significant  day  I  am  to  speak  to  you  as 
contemporaries  of  one  another,  older  and  younger 
indeed,  but  together  sharing  the  privilege  of  hu- 
man existence,  moral  service  and  Christian 
faith. 

i .  Good  contemporaries  do  not  fail  in  affec- 
tionate veneration  for  the  past  in  so  far  as  it  has 
been  great ;  they  do  not  fail  in  pity  and  sorrow 
for  it  in  so  far  as  it  has  been  mean.  Noble  spirits 
like  to  rehearse  the  story  of  the  heroism  of  other 
times  ;  they  dwell  with  pleasure  upon  the  mighty 
thoughts  and  deeds  of  those  who  were  of  old  ; 
they  love  to  renew  the  memory  of  the  gracious 
and  valiant  past,  to  paint  upon  the  canvas  of 
to-day  the  faces  of  the  brave  men  and  the  beauti- 
ful women  of  yesterday.  It  is  part  of  the  high 
privilege  of  existence  to  renew  together  the  vision 
of  the  thinker  and  doer,  the  poet  and  prophet, 
the  ruler  and  reformer  who  wrought  to  redeem 
our  world.  When  I  was  a  lad  working  on  a 
farm  there  stood  in  the  background  of  the  land- 


[»] 

scape  a  shapely  and  lofty  hill.  Much  of  the  time 
I  was  too  busy  to  see  it,  much  of  the  time  it 
could  not  be  seen  owing  to  cloud  and  storm ;  but 
now  and  then  it  rose  up  in  some  great  sunset  in 
such  beauty  and  majesty  that  I  was  constrained  to 
look  at  it  and  to  love  it.  I  recall,  too,  many 
a  time  walking  a  mile  that  I  might  look  upon  it 
at  a  certain  angle,  that  I  might  see  it  at  its  best. 
Gradually  the  feeling  grew  within  me  that  whether 
I  saw  it  or  not,  I  knew  it  was  there,  the  great,  dark, 
stable  background  of  my  life,  the  meeting  place 
of  earth  and  sky,  the  fountain  of  refreshment  for 
the  fields  spread  out  between  it  and  the  sea,  the 
center  of  wonder  and  love.  So  our  noble  prede- 
cessors appear.  They  are  the  background  of  our 
existence.  We  are  too  much  absorbed  to  think 
of  them  often ;  we  are  imprisoned  in  the  grave 
interests  of  the  present ;  but  now  and  then  we 
have  leisure  to  pause,  to  lift  our  eyes  to  the  hills 
whence  our  lives  have  descended,  to  stand  for  a 
few  great  moments  in  the  vision  of  the  mighty  of 
the  generations  that  have  gone  before,  as  of  end- 
less mountain  ranges,  whose  far-soaring  summits 
are  transfigured  in  the  glow  that  sometimes  falls 
upon  them  out  of  heaven.  At  such  times  we 
know  that  without  that  past  we  should  be  noth- 
ing; without  it  we  should  be  bereaved  of  our 
greatest  teachers,  our  wisest  leaders,  of  the 
world  which  they  made  habitable,  fruitful,  and 
beautiful  for  us. 


[»] 

Within  this  vaster  world  of  historic  man,  as  a 
circle  narrow  but  precious  within  the  mighty 
circumference  of  the  ages  of  the  great  and  good, 
we  recall  the  background  of  this  church.  We 
think  of  the  fifteen  ministers  of  the  church  who 
in  various  ways  and  in  different  measures  served 
it,  and  who  left  no  stain  upon  its  fair  name. 
Their  names  are  graven  on  yonder  tablet,  dim 
but  precious,  and  in  the  dim  religious  light  of 
this  edifice,  still  drawing  our  thoughts  to  highest 
things,  and  hallowing  our  rich  humanities  out  of 
the  heaven  in  which  they  live.  We  think  of 
Franklin  and  Sewall  and  Samuel  Adams,  typical 
of  hundreds  less  eminent  but  equally  worthy, 
who  are  forever  associated  with  this  church.  We 
think  of  a  nameless  multitude,  like  a  vast  white 
cloud  rising  in  the  field  of  vision,  glorious  in 
light  and  purity,  men  and  women  who  saw  here 
the  heavenly  vision,  who  through  a  thousand  dis- 
couragements pursued  it,  who  found  it  their  in- 
spiration in  life  and  their  hope  in  death.  We 
turn  to  that  precious  past  in  grateful  honor  ;  we 
confess  with  delight  that  we  reap  what  we  did 
not  sow  ;  that  as  we  bring  our  sheaves  with  us 
we  think  with  affectionate  veneration  of  the 
seven  generations  of  the  noble  and  wise  who 
went  forth  weeping  bearing  precious  seed,  cast- 
ing it  abroad  in  this  community  in  a  sublime 
vision  of  the  future.  Our  harvest  is  first  of  all 
in  their  honor  ;    if  this  were  a  banquet  instead  of 


[,3] 

a  sermon   we    should    rise   and   salute   them  in 
silent,    immortal    honor. 

2.  Good  contemporaries  do  not  fail  in  solici- 
tude for  their  successors.  On  this  I  need  not 
dwell.  The  anxiety  of  all  noble  parenthood  re- 
lates to  the  future  of  the  children  when  the  world 
shall  be  theirs,  and  when  no  father  or  mother  shall 
be  present  as  a  shield  against  evil  and  pain.  All 
wise  men  live  out  of  the  future  no  less  than  out 
of  the  past.  The  state  of  the  world  as  they  in- 
herit it  is  not  ideal ;  they  desire  to  bequeath  it  in 
a  better  condition  than  they  found  it.  For  this 
world  is  like  an  entailed  estate.  We  receive  it 
from  our  predecessors,  here  wonderfully  im- 
proved and  there  dismally  impoverished;  and 
when  we  are  great  enough  in  character  we  wish 
to  add  to  the  improvements  others  of  our  own  ; 
and  to  undo  the  work  of  the  prodigal  and  villain. 
It  is  part  of  the  privilege  of  existence  to  be  con- 
cerned about  the  state  of  the  world  as  inherited 
by  our  successors.  Our  interest  in  industrial 
and  social  reform,  in  our  schools  and  colleges,  in 
all  forms  of  education,  in  the  total  higher  char- 
acter of  our  city,  our  commonwealth  and  coun- 
try, in  religious  faith  and  religious  service,  is  a 
heart  interest  in  the  coming  generation  of  Ameri- 
cans. Our  obligation  to  the  future  is  vast  and 
solemn ;  with  the  vision  of  the  City  of  God  in 
our  eyes  we  would  work  for  the  Americans  that 
are  to  be.     And  as  we  thus  work  we  say  in  the 


[i'4] 

great  words  of  Webster,  "Advance,  then,  ye 
future  generations!  We  would  hail  you,  as  you 
rise  in  your  long  succession,  to  fill  the  places 
which  we  now  fill,  and  to  taste  the  blessings  of 
existence  where  we  are  passing,  and  soon  shall 
have  passed,  our  own  human  duration.  We  bid 
you  welcome  to  this  pleasant  land  of  the  fathers. 
We  greet  your  accession  to  the  great  inheritance 
which  we  have  enjoyed.  We  welcome  you  to 
the  blessings  of  good  government  and  religious 
liberty.  We  welcome  you  to  the  treasures  of 
science  and  the  delights  of  learning.  We  wel- 
come you  to  the  transcendent  sweets  of  domestic 
life,  to  the  happiness  of  kindred  and  parents  and 
children.  We  welcome  you  to  the  immeasurable 
blessings  of  rational  existence,  the  immortal  hope 
of  Christianity  and  the  light  of  everlasting 
truth." 

3.  After  we  have  suitably  honored  those  who 
went  before  us,  and  tenderly  greeted  those  who 
shall  come  after  us,  it  is  permissible  to  dwell  for 
a  few  moments  on  our  contemporaries.  And 
here  it  must  be  admitted  that  now  and  then  our 
contemporaries  appear  a  queer  lot,  in  the  expres- 
sive phrase  of  Burns,  "  an  unco  squad."  There 
is  profound  and  incessant  competition  among  us ; 
there  is  grave  misunderstanding;  occasionally 
there  is  malice.  In  cases  of  transcendent  genius 
or  when  genius  is  born  out  of  due  season,  the 
hostility    of  the  human  environment  sometimes 


[i5] 

becomes  tragic.  Here  we  think  of  poets  like 
Milton  and  Dante,  reformers  like  Ridley  and 
Latimer,  prophets  like  Savanarola  and  Hus,  the 
Christian  apostles  and  their  divine  Master.  In 
such  instances  the  contemporary  world  in  its 
leading  class  is  woefully  blind  and  cruel;  and 
the  man  of  genius  is  compelled  to  appeal  to  the 
supreme  court  of  the  future.  It  is  necessary,  in 
such  high  examples,  to  call  upon  coming  time  to 
redress  the  wrongs  done  by  the  present  time,  to 
intrust  one's  cause  and  one's  good  name  to  the 
manhood  of  the  future  where  the  present  genera- 
tion has  been  so  woefully  unjust.  The  world 
and  the  ages  is  the  supreme  court  of  appeal;  it 
is  forever  open  to  misunderstood,  misrepresented, 
persecuted,  and  assassinated  genius  and  goodness. 
On  the  whole,  for  the  average  servant  of  his 
time,  I  look  with  gratitude  upon  the  severities  of 
the  human  environment.  To  serve  the  present 
age  is  all  that  our  Maker  requires  of  most  men. 
If  we  fail  to  do  good  now,  it  is  futile  to  expect 
that  we  shall  do  good  to  any  future  generation. 
And  in  qualifying  us  for  service  here  and  now, 
the  severities  of  our  human  environment  are 
essential.  People  sometimes  sigh  over  the  fact 
that  the  Garden  of  Eden  had  a  forbidden  tree  in 
it,  and  a  serpent ;  I  think  if  there  had  been  a 
hundred  forbidden  trees  in  it,  mixed  with  the 
other  trees,  and  serpents  hissing  from  every  bush, 
Adam   and   Eve   might  have  fared   better.      The 


[i6j 

universal  hostility  might  have  called  into  being 
keen  and  sleepless  vigilance  and  a  moral  caution 
always  on  duty.  As  I  read  the  tragic  story  of 
human  failure,  I  find  that  it  proceeds  from  a 
fancied  security  seemingly  warranted  by  the  gen- 
eral friendly  aspect  of  the  environment.  It  takes 
but  one  lion  or  tiger  in  a  jungle  to  kill  the  un- 
wary traveler  ;  and  if  he  were  told  that  he  must 
be  armed  for  an  encounter  with  many  wild  beasts, 
his  chances  of  escape  might  be  better.  Among 
preachers  this  is  surely  true.  The  human  envi- 
ronment is  apt  to  be  too  friendly,  especially  in 
their  youth.  The  people  assume  that  these 
preachers  are  wonderfully  good,  wonderfully 
gifted  ;  some  of  the  people  speak  of  them  as  if 
they  were  saints.  In  such  heavenly  love  abiding 
the  young  preacher  is  apt  to  neglect  profound  and 
systematic  study  ;  he  is  apt  to  think  lightly  of 
carefully  prepared  courses  of  thought ;  he  is  apt 
to  become  extempore  in  intellect,  in  character,  and 
in  service  ;  and  an  extempore  teacher  and  preacher 
of  religion,  in  the  exact  sense  of  the  word,  is  on 
the  way  to  perdition  with  his  devoted  people  fol- 
lowing hard  after  him. 

I  give  thanks  to-day  that  I  was  called  to  a  work 
greater  than  the  powers  writh  which  I  came  to  it, 
that  I  saw  from  the  first  that  if  I  were  ever  to 
equal  my  task  it  must  be  by  continuous  growth. 
I  give  thanks  for  the  general  suspicion  of  my 
ability,  for  the  widespread  sense  of  doubt  concern- 


[»7] 

ing  the  character  of  my  message.  I  give  thanks 
for  the  outspoken  opposition  to  my  views  and 
purposes  on  the  part  of  strong  and  brave  men. 
I  felt  that  I  had  come  to  live  among  men  who  had 
convictions,  who  had  the  courage  to  express  these 
convictions,  and  to  stand  by  them  when  it  was 
unpopular  so  to  do.  I  now  give  thanks  that  a 
large  minority  voted  against  my  installation  as 
minister  of  this  church,  that  these  men  gave 
steady  utterance  to  their  distrust  of  me,  that  for 
eight  years  after  my  settlement  here,  I  could  ap- 
pear as  a  speaker  in  my  own  denomination  no- 
where without  meeting  a  chill  as  from  the  regions 
of  eternal  ice.  I  give  thanks  to-day  and  with 
the  utmost  sincerity  and  solemnity  for  the  intrin- 
sic difficulty  of  my  task,  made  tenfold  more 
difficult  by  the  atmosphere  charged  as  it  was  with 
intense  and  enduring  hostility. 

The  reasons  for  my  thanksgiving  are  easily 
stated.  I  knew  that  I  had  to  prepare  for  battle, 
that  the  battle  was  to  be  a  campaign.  I  knew 
that  there  must  be  no  trifling.  Whatever  of  ca- 
pacity lay  in  me,  as  thinker,  as  preacher,  as  friend 
to  the  human  soul,  as  man,  was  needed  in  this 
contest.  I  must  revere  and  cherish  every  possi- 
bility ;  I  must  seek  through  long  years  of  diligence 
and  honor  the  realization  of  power.  To  do  any- 
thing else  would  render  defeat  and  disaster  inevi- 
table. And  if  the  result  is  far  less  than  it  might 
have  been,  it  is  much  more  and  higher  than  it 


[i8] 

would  have  been  had  not  the  severe  humanities 
of  my  environment  created  vigilance,  self-control, 
and  filled  the  solitudes  of  existence  with  divine 
companionship  and  protection.  Woe  to  you, 
young  man,  when  all  men  speak  well  of  you. 
You  are  a  mollusk  and  not  a  man  ;  and  if  you  are 
a  man  still  without  prodigious  care,  that  atmos- 
phere of  adulation  will  surely  convert  you  into  a 
jelly-fish.  When  Solomon  was  going  down  hill, 
the  Lord  raised  up  an  adversary  against  him ;  and 
when  that  did  no  good,  still  another  adversary 
was  divinely  raised  up.  Even  the  wrath  and  mal- 
ice of  our  contemporaries  may  become  help  from 
on  high,  as  a  headwind  at  sea  serves  to  keep  the 
great  steamer' s  furnaces  going  at  full  blast;  and 
the  adverse  opinions  and  influence  of  noble  men 
are  a  divine  force  in  the  evolution  of  a  just,  sane, 
responsible  manhood. 

There  is  room  in  the  human  environment  for 
the  benign  no  less  than  the  severe.  The  mother's 
caress  is  always  in  order,  the  father's  word  of 
love  and  hope  is  never  out  of  place  ;  because 
the  world  may  be  confidently  relied  upon  to 
administer  the  antidote.  The  home  with  its 
endearment,  expectation,  and  abounding  love  is  a 
precious  qualification  of  an  otherwise  too  severe 
environment ;  it  is  like  the  flood  of  June  sunshine 
that  tempers  the  strong  east  wind  into  a  pleasant 
and  wholesome  servant  of  life.  There  is  room 
for  our  friends,  and  all  their  exaggeration  of  our 


[i9] 

power  and  our  worth .  Their  glorious  confidence , 
their  shining  affection,  and  their  warm  hope  make 
the  atmosphere  of  our  lives  a  delight  and  an 
incentive. 

Here  again  I  give  thanks.  The  men  and 
women  who  called  me  to  become  minister  of  this 
church  were  one  and  all  friends.  The  members 
of  the  joint-committee  of  the  church  and  of  the 
society  who  presented  the  call,  only  one  of  whom 
survives  to  this  day,  gave  me  steadfast  support. 
When  I  was  received  into  the  church  on  Friday 
evening,  March  7,  i884,  the  welcome  I  received 
was  profoundly  moving;  and  it  was  prophetic. 
Brave  men  and  beautiful  women  came  forward 
and  gave  me  the  right-hand  of  fellowship,  a  hand 
withdrawn  only  in  death.  The  adverse  feeling 
in  the  Council  only  stirred  to  a  greater  depth  the 
loyalty  and  devotion  of  my  people.  Following 
upon  the  first  Sunday  came  a  Tuesday  evening 
reception.  Such  functions  have  not  for  me  an 
exaggerated  fascination  ;  but  the  vision  that  came 
to  me  and  that  brightened  forever  that  evening 
has  remained,  and  will  remain,  a  heavenly  vision. 
I  saw  a  company  of  youth,  supported  by  their 
parents  and  kindred,  to  whom  it  was  to  be  the 
privilege  of  my  existence  to  bring  the  divine 
illumination  and  transfiguration.  After  this 
beginning  in  storm  and  friendship  and  romance, 
came  the  long,  hard,  laborious  years.  I  can  think 
of  nothing  finer  than  the  wise  support,  the  noble 


[«o] 

friendship,  the  patient  confidence,  and  the  con- 
tinuous inspiration  of  hope  that  came  to  me  from 
the  generation  that  called  me  to  service  here. 
The  names  of  the  leaders  of  the  church  in  those 
trying  days  are  engraven  in  grateful  and  everlast- 
ing memory : 

"  Again  ye  come,  ye  hovering  Forms  !  I  find  ye, 
As  early  to  my  clouded  sight  ye  shone  I 
Shall  I  attempt,  this  once,  to  seize  and  bind  ye? 
Still  o'er  my  heart  is  that  illusion  thrown  ? 
Ye  crowd  more  near  I  Then,  be  the  reign  assigned  ye, 
And  sway  me  from  your  misty,  shadowy  zone  1 
My  bosom  thrills,  with  youthful  passion  shaken, 
From  magic  airs  that  sound  your  march  awaken." 

"  Of  joyous  days  ye  bring  the  blissful  vision, 
The  dear,  familiar  phantoms  rise  again, 
And  like  an  old  and  half-extinct  tradition, 
First  Love  returns,  with  Friendship  in  his  train." 

I  have  always  gone  my  way  in  reliance  upon 
the  American  humorist's  beatitude,  "  Blessed  are 
they  that  expect  nothing,  for  they  shall  not  be 
disappointed."  I  confess  to  a  good  deal  of  un- 
easiness as  to  how  I  was  to  fare  with  the  next 
generation  of  my  people.  I  knew  my  noble, 
my  incomparable  friends  who  called  me  could 
not  live  forever.  They  were  in  duty  bound  to 
stand  by  me.  Would  their  sons  and  daughters 
and  those  coming  in  from  the  outside  recognize 
the  obligation  ?  It  seemed  to  me  extremely 
doubtful.  Imagine  my  surprise,  therefore,  and 
my  delight,  when  I  found  the  general  average  of 


[,I] 

ability  in  the  second  generation  higher  than  the 
first;  the  devotion  to  the  church  equal  in  self- 
sacrifice  and  intensity,  and  the  kindness  to  me 
augmented  by  the  consciousness  that  I  had  been 
the  minister  and  friend  of  their  fathers.  I  have 
not  yet  recovered  from  this  noble  surprise,  nor 
shall  I  ever  cease  to  be  grateful  for  it.  Instead 
of  the  fathers  we  have  the  children  ;  and  the 
children  in  devotion  to  the  kingdom  of  God,  and 
to  this  church  as  a  servant  of  that  kingdom  are 
worthy  of  the  fathers  ;  and  their  friendship  for 
me  is  an  apostolic  succession  for  which  I  con- 
tinue to  give  thanks. 

Many  have  come  to  us  from  other  religious 
communities.  They  have  brought  with  them  in- 
expressible additions  to  our  power,  our  richness 
of  life,  our  friendship,  our  fellowship  and  hap- 
piness. The  church  has  adopted  them  without 
let  or  hindrance,  counted  them  among  the  faith- 
ful, and  in  no  case  has  that  confidence  been  dis- 
honored ;  in  many  instances  it  has  been  rewarded 
with  service  as  signal,  and  love  as  great,  as  any 
church  could  well  receive.  They  have  brought 
with  them  honor  for  those  older  in  service  here 
than  themselves,  and  for  the  descendants  of  older 
servants  still;  they  have  aided  us  in  the  strongest 
wish  of  our  hearts  that  we  might  hold  the  Old 
South  Church  to  the  great  ideal  of  democracy. 
This  church  has  been,  more  than  any  other,  iden- 
tified in  past  times  with  the  life  of  the  city  of 


[»] 

Boston;  and  we,  in  our  generation,  desire  to  hold 
the  church  as  the  church  of  the  people. 

I  am  now  face  to  face  with  another  serious 
question.  Am  I  to  gain  the  love  of  the  children's 
children?  To  them  I  have  come  down  from  a 
former  generation ;  to  them  I  must  seem  one  of 
the  surviving  charter  members  of  the  Old  South 
Church.  Indeed,  we  all  recall  how  men  far  on 
in  the  fifties  seemed  to  us  when  we  were  where 
our  children  are.  Did  they  not  appear  as  part 
of  the  original  framework  of  the  world?  Did 
we  not  ponder  the  question  with  some  anxiety, 
How  can  they  find  their  way  in  this  new  world, 
so  touched  with  romance,  entrancing  light,  and 
hope  in  which  we  dwell  ?  I  do  not  wonder  at 
this  question  when  it  concerns  myself.  I  am 
sure  of  this,  that  I  can  gain  access  to  these  pro- 
phetic minds,  aid  you  in  moulding  their  character, 
introduce  them  to  the  kingdom  of  the  soul  only 
through  your  devout  sympathy.  Your  fathers 
moulded  your  minds  in  respect  and  confidence 
toward  me;  your  homes,  while  centers  of  free- 
dom, were  full  not  of  criticism  but  of  gracious 
commendation  of  my  ideals  and  endeavors;  you 
were  bred  in  reverence  for  this  church  and  in 
friendship  for  its  minister ;  and  thus  through  the 
precious  sympathy  of  your  parents  I  was  able  to 
gain  access  to  your  thoughts  and  a  place  in  your 
enduring  esteem. 

Here  is  one  form  of  the  great,  continuous  de- 


[23] 

pendence  of  the  preacher.  He  and  his  people  to- 
gether make  what  is  called  his  ministry;  that  total 
ministry  is  the  product  of  the  preacher's  action 
on  his  people,  and  of  the  reaction  of  the  people 
upon  the  preacher.  This  reaction  of  my  people 
upon  me  I  regard  as  one  of  the  chief  educational 
forces  of  my  life.  In  the  light  of  this  experience 
I  contend  that  the  preacher  depends  upon  the 
gracious  Christian  homes  of  his  congregation, 
upon  the  high  dispositions  of  fathers  and  moth- 
ers, upon  the  atmosphere  which  they  create  and 
which  their  children  breathe  concerning  the 
church  and  the  ideals  and  endeavors  of  the  min- 
ister. With  this  sacred  service  rendered  by  you, 
as  your  parents  rendered  it  to  you,  I  do  not  yet 
see  why  the  children's  children  should  not  be 
among  my  best  friends. 

Tell  them,  therefore,  that  my  sympathies  are 
with  the  childhood  and  youth  of  the  world;  that 
I  care  most  to  say  those  things  which  shall  enrich 
and  illumine  their  existence,  open  before  it  vistas 
of  noble  power  and  joy,  lend  to  it  steadiness  and 
self-control  in  the  day  of  battle,  set  it  more  se- 
curely in  the  possession  of  essential  good,  inter- 
fuse with  the  passion  for  time  the  transfiguring 
sense  of  the  majesty  of  the  Unseen,  attach  it  in  all 
tender  and  enduring  strength  to  its  best  friends, 
show  it  the  glory  and  the  delight  of  Christian  dis- 
cipleship,  and  ground  it  in  the  consciousness  of  the 
dear,  abiding  love  of  the  God  and  Father  of  men. 


t»4] 

The  benignity  and  the  hostility  of  the  imme- 
diate environment  recall  the  same  forces  at  work 
in  the  world-environment,  especially  during  the 
last  fifty  years.  We  have  been  living  in  a  free 
world ;  in  this  atmosphere  of  freedom  men  have 
spoken  their  honest  thought  about  the  universe 
and  about  all  phases  of  human  existence.  Never 
before  on  so  wide  a  scale  have  reality  and  frank- 
ness characterized  the  intellectual  life  of  civilized 
man.  All  established  beliefs  have  been  called  in 
question.  We  have  had  atheism,  agnosticism, 
naturalism,  pessimism,  the  terrestrial  life  of  man 
as  his  only  life  advocated  with  great  ability  and 
complete  sincerity.  Haeckel,  Huxley,  Darwin, 
and  hundreds  of  others  less  eminent,  but  equally 
confident,  have  written  in  revolt  from  the  ancient 
belief  in  the  spirituality  of  man  and  his  universe. 
On  the  other  hand,  German  idealism  has  risen 
up  in  prevailing  protest  against  the  degradation 
of  the  human  spirit.  The  British  disciples  of 
Hegel,  especially  Green,  Wallace,  and  Caird, 
have  contended  for  man  and  man's  world  in  a 
great  and  conclusive  way.  The  scientific  spirit 
has  gone  everywhere;  it  has  sought  facts,  sifted 
them,  weighed  them,  considered  what  deductions 
they  could  honestly  be  made  to  bear.  History 
has  been  largely  rewritten;  the  scientific  history 
of  the  religions  of  the  world  is  a  new  thing  under 
the  sun.  The  Bible  and  the  scientific  historian 
have  met,  and  again  vast  changes  have  followed. 


[>5] 

Scientists  have  become  philosophers  and  divided 
into  opposing  camps,  one  set  including  man  in 
the  order  of  animal  existence  and  finding  in  his 
universe  a  soulless  mechanism  of  matter  and 
force;  another  set  finding  eternal  spirit  every- 
where, working  in  the  cosmos  and  living  and 
breathing  in  the  human  soul.  Here  is  our  Gog 
and  Magog,  our  intellectual  battlefield  with  two 
armies  face  to  face,  and  in  tremendous  conflict. 
We  note  that  truth  is  on  both  sides  the  final 
attachment,  the  last  and  best  inspiration.  We 
confess  on  both  sides  intellectual  power,  sincerity, 
character;  and  we  ask  how  should  one  think  of 
one's  contemporaries  in  this  world-environment  ? 
For  myself  I  give  thanks.  One  great  deliver- 
ance is  at  hand;  the  sham-thinker,  the  sham- 
believer  is  going ;  the  reality  of  existence  is 
asserting  itself,  the  supreme  worth  of  reality  is 
gaining  vaster  sway.  Truth  is  the  quest  of  all 
honest  men  ;  and  even  when  honest  men  are 
mistaken  in  the  main  errand,  the  sacred  toil 
through  which  they  pass  to  their  error  gives 
them  character  out  of  the  Eternal  Spirit.  The 
Civil  War  is  a  symbol  of  the  nineteenth  century. 
The  South  fought  the  North  on  a  mistake;  it 
fought  with  complete  honesty  and  with  unsur- 
passed valor  and  sacrifice ;  it  was  defeated  ;  the 
cause  was  a  lost  cause ;  but  the  tremendous  toil, 
the  sacred  sacrifice  through  which  it  passed  con- 
ferred upon  our  brothers  in  defeat  a  character 


[96] 

that  has  become  part  of  the  strength  and  treasure 
of  the  nation.  Here  in  symbol  is  the  intellectual 
war  of  this  age.  The  atheists,  agnostics,  natural- 
ists, pessimists  of  our  time  are  generally  honest 
and  able  men.  They  love  the  truth  as  devoutly 
as  we  do.  They  fight  for  it  as  gallantly  and 
they  suffer  for  it  as  gladly  as  do  their  opponents. 
They  are  mistaken ;  they  are  hurled  back  in 
defeat,  upon  every  fresh  assault,  by  the  mass  and 
weight  of  the  religious  soul  of  the  world.  Yet 
their  fight  is  not  vain  ;  they  compel  men  to  think, 
to  renew  their  love  of  truth,  to  discern  between 
convention  and  reality,  to  distinguish  essential 
from  unessential,  to  clear  the  divine  habit  of  the 
soul  from  the  foolish  and  often  wicked  customs 
that  have  grown  round  it,  to  admit  new  light,  to 
undertake  revision  of  sacred  books  and  phi- 
losophies of  faith,  to  retreat  upon  the  Eternal 
God  and  to  come  forth  mailed  in  his  strength  for 
the  day  of  battle.  These  negative  thinkers  have 
done  this  service  and  much  more ;  at  the  same 
time  they  have  won  a  character  that  has  become 
a  new  glory  in  our  human  world.  They  are 
in  defeat ;  they  are  bound  to  be  in  defeat ;  yet 
in  their  souls  they  have  won  the  best  things  in 
this  earth,  clean  hands  and  a  pure  heart;  and 
they  have  compelled  us  to  win  our  fight  and  to 
broaden  our  victory  so  that  it  shall  include  them. 

The  successive  generations  of  honest  and  noble 
men  are   like  different  pieces   of  rare    tapestry. 


[^7] 
The  background  looks  dull,  but  we  know  it  is 
essential,  and  we  make  it  together  out  of  the 
gray,  monotonous  fidelities  of  our  fellowship. 
The  figures  are  brilliant  and  fine,  and  again  they 
are  woven  of  the  threads  dyed  in  the  rich  colors 
of  the  common  heart.  This  creation  of  beauty 
and  worth  is  by  our  contemporaries ;  the  con- 
trasts, too,  have  their  place  here,  the  differences 
and  oppositions;  set  in  with  the  harmonies  and 
controlled  by  the  spirit  of  ideal  unity,  that  unity 
which  builds  into  its  fair  design  all  reality  and  ail 
sincerity,  they  are  seen  to  be  essential  to  the  com- 
pleteness of  the  work.  This  complete  work  of 
grace  and  worth  is  the  work  of  our  contempora- 
ries ;  hence  our  supreme  regard  for  them.  They 
and  we  are  sister  threads  in  the  same  pattern ; 
they  and  we  are  woven  together  in  the  same 
design;  they  and  we  are  together  background, 
figure,  fire,  and  joy;  they  and  we  are  together 
harmony,  contrast,  peace,  conflict,  light,  shadow, 
splendor,  and  gloom  ;  our  existence  for  better  for 
worse,  for  richer  for  poorer,  till  death  us  do  part, 
is  bound  into  one.  And  this  it  is  that  makes  the 
contemporary  world  so  great  and  so  precious  to 
the  large-minded  and  generous  individual  human 
being. 

When  we  think  of  the  end,  as  we  are  more 
and  more  bound  to  do,  we  must  often  wonder 
over  the  strange  world  into  which  we  shall  emerge 
from  death.      Going  as  we  do  from  our  friends 


[28] 

here,  passing  from  a  world  that  the  better  we 
have  served  it  the  more  we  have  loved  it,  into  a 
region  unknown,  shall  we  find  awaiting  us  men 
and  women  who  shall  take  away  the  strangeness 
and  the  loneliness  of  that  mysterious  realm?  We 
hope  to  make  the  solitary  and  wild  journey  in 
the  happy  consciousness,  "I  will  fear  no  evil  for 
thou  art  with  me,"  and  in  the  realization  of  the 
great  promise,  "To-day  shalt  thou  be  with  me  in 
Paradise" ;  and  yet  do  we  not  long  for  household 
voices  and  vanished  smiles  to  greet  us  there?  I 
think  that  in  heaven  we  shall  not  feel  quite  at 
home  till  we  stand  encircled  by  our  contempora- 
ries who  have  preceded  us  to  the  world  of  light, 
whose  comradeship  on  earth  again  renewed  shall 
add  new  zest  to  the  regions  of  bliss,  whose  friendly 
offices  will  be  greatly  appreciated  by  the  bewild- 
ered stranger,  whose  gracious  influence  will  be  to 
us  when  we  awaken  from  the  stupor  of  death 
like  a  mother's  reassuring  voice  when  as  children 
we  awoke  from  some  wild  dream  in  fear  and  pain. 
As  the  world  into  which  we  awoke  in  panic  was 
our  mother's  work  and  therefore  one  of  peace,  so 
the  world  upon  which  we  open  our  vision  beyond 
death  will  be  that  of  friends,  fellow-servants,  con- 
temporaries, and  therefore  one  with  the  notes  of 
welcome,  good  cheer,  high  memory,  and  divine 
regard  forever  ringing  in  it;  and  our  God  will 
greet  us  there  as  here,  through  our  kind,  through 
our  kindred,  through  the  eyes  and  the  voices  of 


[=9] 

dear  familiar  souls,  through  the  sacred  order  and 

light  of  those  with  whom  we  stood, 

toiled,   suffered,   and  rejoiced 

in  the  kingdom  of  love 

in  time. 


PRAYER 


THIS     PRAYER    FOLLOWED    THE     ANNIVERSARY    SERMON     ON 
SUNDAY    MORNING,    A    APRIL,     I9O9 


INFINITE  FATHER,  Lord  God  of  our  fathers  and 
of  our  brothers  who  have  served  with  us  here,  we 
look  backward  with  regret  and  with  gratitude :  with 
regret  that  we  have  served  thee  so  ill — with  grati- 
tude that  thy  grace  has  abounded  and  still  wrought 
through  us  for  light  and  for  joy.  We  look  back- 
ward to  a  great,  silent,  inalienable,  and  immortal 
possession.  Put  it  this  day  forever  within  our  hearts. 
0  that  silent  and  beautiful  kingdom  in  which  we  see 
fair  and  lovely  lives  moving  without  sound,  with  the 
light  upon  them  that  comes  from  thy  approving  face 
and  thy  joy  in  them  !  May  that  kingdom  never  depart 
from  us. 

Bless  thy  people  here,  and  through  the  tender  and 
noble  sympathy  of  this  hour  make  us  more  generous 
and  lofty-minded  men  and  women,  and  whatever  be 
thy  appointment  for  us  in  the  days  to  come,  give  us 
strength  to  lean  upon  thy  wisdom  and  walk  in  the 
way  of  thy  commandment,  and  to  surrender  our 
powers  to  thee  so  that  through  their  use  thy  love  and 
thy  pity  may  come  and  abide  with  men. 

And  may  the' grace  of  our  Lord  Jesus  Christ,  and 
the  love  of  God,  and  the  communion  of  the  Holy  Spirit 
be  with  us  all,  now  and  evermore,  Amen. 


HYMN 


THIS  HYMN,  "YEARS  AND  ASPIRATIONS,  WAS  WRITTEN  BY 
DR.  GORDON  FOR  THE  ANNIVERSARY  CELEBRATION,  AND  WAS 
SUNG  TO  THE  TUNE  "ST.  BEES "  BY  THE  CHOIR  AND  THE 
CONGREGATION  AT  THE  MORNING  SERVICE,  SUNDAY,  4  APRIL, 
igOQ,  AND  ALSO  AT  THE  PUBLIC  MEETING,  MONDAY  EVEN- 
ING, 12  APRIL,  I9O9 


YEARS  AND  ASPIRATIONS 

EAD  me,  Lord,  through  all  my  days, 
In  Thy  great  and  wondrous  ways, 
Lift  my  heart  to  grander  hours, 

Hold  me  with  Thy  heavenly  powers. 


Of  the  Past  may  I  still  keep 
Things  divine  both  high  and  deep, 
Morning  light  and  evening  glow 
That  have  ever  blessed  me  so. 

Memories  that  ever  shine; 
Friends  unseen  but  friends  still  mine ; 
Service  sweet  in  high  reward ; 
Spirits  blest  in  dear  regard. 

Tender  sympathies  and  tears, 
Precious  store  of  noble  years  ; 
Visions  wide  on  pathways  wild, 
Chastened  thought  again  a  child ! 

Trust  in  Thee  that  surer  grows ; 
Human  love  that  fears  no  foes  ; 
Faith  that  to  Thy  heart  belong 
Worlds  now  lost  in  woe  and  wrong. 

Show  me,  Lord,  Thy  word  of  grace — 
Christ,  Thy  glory  in  his  face; 
That  I  through  my  fleeting  hour, 
Serve  Thy  kingdom  in  Thy  power. 


Jttottirap  Cbening  iWeettng 

W&t  Otoelftf)  of  8pril,  Nineteen 
^unbreo  anb  J^ine 


[4o] 


s 


THE   OLD   SOUTH  CHURCH 

TRONG  tower  of  truth  against  the  sky, 
How  strong  the  soul  must  stand, 
When,  in  God's  name,  it  speaks  the  Word 
By  His  divine  command ! 


O  House  of  Prayer  beneath  the  stars, 
How  hushed  the  heart  must  be, 
When,  with  the  Son  of  Man,  it  prays 
For  our  Humanity ! 

Great  Church  that  from  the  fathers  came, 

Stand  ever  in  man's  sight, 

A  sign,  a  witness,  and  a  prayer 

For  Freedom  and  the  Right ! 

Straight  from  the  stars  thy  truth  be  given  — 

Broad  as  the  earth  thy  plan ! 

The  House  our  fathers  raised  to  God 

He  consecrates  to  man. 

[This  hymn,  "  The  Old  South  Church,"  was  written  by  Dr. 
Allen  E.  Cross  for  the  anniversary  celebration,  inscribed  to 
the  Reverend  George  A.  Gordon,  D.D.,  and  was  sung  to  the 
tune  "St.  Anne"  by  the  Choir  and  Congregation  at  the 
Public  Meeting,  Monday,   12  April,   1909.] 


MR.    HARDY'S    WELCOME 


AT  a  meeting,  celebrating  the  twenty-fifth  anniversary 
of  the  installation  of  Dr.  George  A.  Gordon  as  min- 
ister of  the  Old  South  Church  (the  Third  Church  in 
Boston),  held  the  twelfth  of  April,  nineteen  hundred 
and  nine,  at  eight  o'clock  p.  m.,  Alpheus  H.  Hardy, 
Esq.,  presided. 

Prior  to  the  Invocation,  by  the  Reverend  A.  P. 
Fitch,  Mr.  Hardy  cordially  welcomed ,  on  behalf  of  the 
Old  South  Church  and  Society,  all  friends  who  by 
their  presence  showed  their  regard  for  Dr .  Gordon  and 
their  appreciation  of  the  work  which  he  had  done. 


MR.   HARDY'S   REMARKS 

THE  church  which  welcomes  you  here  to- 
night is  not  in  its  personnel  that  which 
settled  Dr.  Gordon  twenty-five  years  ago. 
About  eighty-three  per  cent,  of  the  present 
membership  have  come  into  the  church  since 
Dr.  Gordon  was  settled  ;  but  about  ten  per 
cent,  of  the  then  male  membership  is  with  us 
now.  Of  the  nine  gentlemen  who  formed  the 
committee  which  called  him,  but  one  is  living. 
Therefore,  in  view  of  the  Easter  days  which  are 
just  passed,  we  believe  in  the  Church  above  as 
in  the  Church  below,  and  we  can  but  feel  that 
if  the  spirits  of  the  just  made  perfect  can  take 
cognizance  of  the  things  which  occur  here  on 
earth  that  we,  to-night,  may  be  encompassed  by 
an  innumerable  cloud  of  witnesses,  of  those  who 
have  loved,  and  worshiped  with,  and  served  the 
Old  South  Church  during  the  past  two  hundred 
and  forty  years. 


THEOLOGICAL   CHANGES   OF   A 
QUARTER   CENTURY 


IN  introducing  the  Reverend  Professor  Williston 
Walker,  D.D.,  Mr.  Hardy  said :  The  historian  of 
the  Old  South  Church,  the  late  Mr.  Hamilton  A .  Hill, 
imprinted  this  simple  foreword  upon  the  first  official 
page  of  its  history  : 

' '  For  well  she  keeps  the  ancient  stock 

The  stubborn  strength  of  Plymouth  Rock; 
And  still  maintains  with  milder  laws 
And  clearer  light  the  good  old  cause." 

You  know  this  church  was  founded  in  a  question  of 
faith,  a  dispute  about  the  matter  of  faith  and  practice. 
It  has  always  stood  for  the  right  to  apprehend  truth 
under  the  ultimate  truth,  under  new  revelations.  It 
is  a  great  satisfaction  to  us  of  the  younger  generation 
that  ive  live  at  a  time  when  there  are  ' '  milder  laws 
and  clearer  light."  Many  of  the  changes  which  are 
implied  in  this  foreword  have  taken  place  within 
twenty-five  years  and  of  them  Prof .  Williston  Walker, 
of  the  Divinity  school  of  Yale  University,  will  now 
speak. 


PROFESSOR  WALKER'S  ADDRESS 

THE  task  to  which  your  Committee  has  done 
me  the  honor  to  invite  me  on  this  occasion 
when  we  commemorate  a  quarter  century 
of  a  pastorate  eminently  distinguished  in  New 
England,  is  that  of  setting  forth  the  theological 
changes  which  have  occurred  in  this  period  of 
time  in  the  region,  and  among  the  churches,  in 
which  this  pastorate  has  been  fulfilled.  The 
quarter  of  a  century,  though  but  a  brief  span  of 
time  when  measured  in  a  nation's  development, 
is  long  enough,  if  the  conditions  be  favorable,  to 
witness  great  changes  of  thought  and  modifica- 
tions of  current  belief.  What  a  quarter  of  a 
century  that  was,  for  instance,  which  followed 
the  posting  of  Luther's  theses  on  the  door  of  the 
Castle  Church  in  Wittenberg  in  1517.  How 
profoundly  was  thought  modified  in  the  natural 
sciences  in  the  quarter  century  that  followed  the 
publication  of  Darwin's  "  Origin  of  Species"  in 
1859.  Such  a  period  in  religious  thought  has 
been  the  last  twenty-five  years  among  us.  Not 
but  that  the  roots  and  antecedents  of  the  changes 
which  it  has  witnessed  run  back  far  behind  its 
beginnings.      But  this  period  has  witnessed  the 


[48] 

coming  into  the  general  apprehension  of  our 
Christian  public  of  changes  in  religious  thought 
more  radical  and  more  far  sweeping  in  their 
effects  than  had  been  witnessed  in  any  similar 
period  since  the  Reformation. 

It  is  always  difficult  for  those  who  are  a  part, 
themselves,  of  a  great  transition,  to  appreciate 
correctly  its  significance,  or  to  estimate  at  their 
right  value  its  probable  ultimate  results,  as  we 
can  do  those  of  epochs  which  have  become  his- 
toric. We  run  much  risk  of  mistaking  the  tem- 
porary for  the  permanent,  and  the  relatively 
non-essential  for  the  important.  We  are  con- 
fused in  our  judgments  because  in  any  great 
period  of  transition  in  human  thought  the  modi- 
fication of  opinion  is  very  unequal  in  its  distri- 
bution. Not  merely  the  conservative  and  the 
radical  labor  side  by  side,  but  all  shades  of 
belief  between  these  two  extremes  are  repre- 
sented, so  that  any  affirmation  as  to  the  changes 
which  have  taken  place  has  to  be,  at  best,  of  an 
approximate  character,  and  is  liable  to  the  criti- 
cism that  it  does  not  represent  the  position  which 
has  been  attained  by  the  more  eager,  or  that 
which  the  less  movable  would  still  conserve. 
The  utmost  that  one  can  hope  to  do  in  such  an 
estimate  is  to  point  out  certain  general  tendencies 
and  to  measure,  as  best  one  can,  the  progress 
which  they  have  made. 

Twenty-five  years  ago  the  fabric  of  belief  in 


[49] 

our  Congregational  churches  of  New  England, 
and  it  is  with  them  that  we  have  especially  to 
do,  was  still  that  of  the  great  thinkers  of  the 
eighteenth  century,  though  much  attenuated  from 
their  pristine  intensity.  They  were  a  race  of 
intellectual  giants,  of  whom  New  England  may 
well  be  proud,  that  led  the  thinking  of  our 
churches  from  Jonathan  Edwards  to  Professor 
Park.  Nor  have  we  less  reason  to  be  proud  of 
the  intellectual  gifts  and  moral  earnestness  of  that 
other  and  protesting  line  sprung  from  the  same 
New  England  soil,  in  which  Ghanning  was  the 
protagonist.  The  types  of  thought  which  they 
represented  still  shaped  New  England  thinking 
twenty-five  years  ago,  and,  in  the  churches  of 
our  Congregational  order,  the  ' '  New  England 
theology,"  as  it  was  called,  which  had  been 
wrought  out  by  the  older  and  larger  line,  of 
which  mention  has  been  made,  still  controlled 
the  average  opinions  of  our  pulpits.  It  was,  in- 
deed, suffering  a  process  of  attrition  and  disinte- 
gration. The  most  adequate  statement  of  the 
theological  position  of  our  churches  twenty-five 
years  ago  is  that  contained  in  the  ' '  Commission 
Creed"  issued  at  the  close  of  i883,  less  than  four 
months  before  this  pastorate  began.  It  repre- 
sented the  best  thought  of  our  Congregational 
churches  at  the  time,  and  was  approved  by 
twenty-two  out  of  a  committee  of  twenty-five 
appointed  by  the  National  Council,  and  intended 


[5o] 

to  be  as  broadly  representative  as  possible.  Those 
of  the  commission  who  dissented  from  this  creed 
dissented  not  by  reason  of  the  conservatism  of  its 
statements,  but  because  it  seemed  to  them  too 
advanced.  That  creed  is  indeed  a  very  different 
statement  of  faith  from  what  the  beginning  of  the 
nineteenth  century  would  have  produced  among 
us.  It  may  well  be  doubted  whether  a  Leonard 
Woods  or  a  Nathaniel  W.  Taylor  would  have 
been  at  all  satisfied  with  its  indefinitenesses,  and 
especially  with  the  absence  from  it  of  any  of  those 
sharp  Calvinistic  conceptions  characteristic  of  the 
historical  theology  of  New  England.  In  many 
respects  it  is  true  that  the  Commission  Greed  is 
still  an  admirable  statement  of  what  is  held 
among  us,  but  its  general  atmosphere  is  that  of 
an  age  which  has  passed  away,  at  least  in  this 
region,  and  one  feels  in  reading  it,  not  so  much 
through  its  particular  statements  as  through  the 
general  impression  of  the  creed  as  a  whole,  that 
one  is  breathing  the  air  of  an  earlier  theological 
age. 

The  causes  of  the  changes  which  the  last 
twenty-five  years  have  witnessed  in  our  theo- 
logical thought  have  been  general,  not  local. 
They  have  not  had  their  beginnings  among  us, 
and  we  have  been  drawn  into  a  movement  already 
far  advanced  in  other  lands,  rather  than  have 
been,  in  any  considerable  degree,  initiators  in  its 
progress.     To  a  very  considerable   extent,   New 


[5i] 

England  paid  the  cost  of  the  great  theological 
development  of  the  earlier  epoch  by  what  may 
be  called,  not  untruly,  a  provincialism  of  mind, 
which  made  it  only  slowly  susceptible  to  modifi- 
cations that  twenty-five  years  ago  were  already 
far  advanced  in  Germany  and  Great  Britain.  But 
at  the  beginning  of  this  pastorate  the  changes 
were  at  hand,  and  the  influences  of  conceptions 
already  far  developed  in  other  lands  were  about 
to  come  in  upon  us  as  with  a  flood. 

Fortunately  the  question  which  first  brought  to 
general  public  consciousness  among  us  the  fact 
that  important  changes  were  taking  place  in  our 
theological  thinking  was  relatively  one  of  unim- 
portant significance.  What  ancient  history  the 
Andover  Controversy  now  seems,  and  how  rela- 
tively trivial,  as  compared  with  the  changes  that 
have  since  taken  place,  appear  the  issues  involved. 
Yet  how  strenuous  was  the  dispute  from  the  ini- 
tiation of  the  trial  of  Professor  Egbert  G.  Smyth, 
in  1886,  to  the  dismissal  of  the  case  against  him 
by  the  Visitors  of  the  Seminary  in  1892.  How 
sharp  was  the  controversy  which  turned  meeting 
after  meeting  of  the  American  Board  into  theo- 
logical battle-grounds,  till  terminated  by  the  prac- 
tical victory  of  those  who  sought  a  more  liberal 
basis  of  missionary  appointment,  at  the  meeting 
of  the  Board,  in  Worcester,  in  1893.  Viewed 
from  the  standpoint  of  the  present,  the  question 
in  dispute,  as  it  formulated  itself  in  the  popular 


[5a] 

mind,  seems  a  relatively  remote  and  trivial  spec- 
ulation. A  corollary  itself  of  a  theory  of  rela- 
tionship of  the  development  of  character  to  the 
historic  Christ,  it  asserted  cautiously,  and  rather 
tentatively  for  the  most  part,  the  necessity  of 
some  knowledge  of  His  saving  personality  here- 
after if  not  here,  before  a  man's  ultimate  destiny 
is  fixed.  As  popularly  interpreted,  it  implied 
probation  after  death  for  those  who  had  not  in 
this  life  an  adequate  knowledge  of  Christ.  Yet 
how  great  was  the  sound  of  the  battle  in  our 
churches,  and  how  perilously  near  we  were  to 
separation  into  two  warring  denominations,  each 
with  their  separate  organs  for  missionary  activity, 
and  each  dividing  yet  further  the  strength  of  our 
already  far  too  much  divided  American  Chris- 
tianity. From  this  unhappy  fate  we  were  saved 
by  the  Christian  brotherliness  of  the  contestants 
on  either  side  of  the  battle,  and  by  the  large  de- 
gree of  charity  and  mutual  tolerance  which,  in 
spite  of  occasional  signs  of  a  contrary  spirit, 
marked  its  progress.  So  notably  was  this  the 
case,  that  I  think  that  these  episodes  may  be  ac- 
counted among  the  most  honorable  in  the  history 
of  our  New  England  churches.  They  who  then 
struggled  were  men  now  very  generally  passed 
from  us  to  that  larger  knowledge  and  closer 
fellowship  of  the  heavenly  kingdom.  They  are  to 
be  held  in  reverence  by  us,  who  fought  on  either 
side  in  this  controversy,  for,  feeling  keenly  the 


[53] 

issues  involved,  they  yet  placed  Christian  unity 
above  success  by  division,  and  retained  confi- 
dence in  the  Christian  character  of  their  opposing 
brethren . 

I  have  said  that  the  issue  brought  directly  be- 
fore the  public  in  the  controversy  regarding 
teaching  in  Andover  Seminary,  and  missionary 
appointments  by  the  American  Board,  was,  in 
itself,  a  discussion  of  a  relatively  unimportant 
point  of  speculation.  But  the  conservatives  in 
that  struggle,  though  not  conscious  of  the  further 
issues  involved,  which  then  lay  behind  the  veil  of 
the  future,  were  right  in  their  feeling  that  these 
innovations  must  be  opposed  if  the  older  fabric 
of  New  England  thinking  was  to  stand.  The 
tolerance  achieved  for  the  more  radical  wing  in 
the  controversy  was  the  opening  of  the  door  for 
the  incoming  of  much  more  important,  significant, 
and  wide-reaching  theological  changes  which  have 
since  gone  rapidly  forward  among  our  churches, 
practically  without  opposition.  We  purchased 
our  present  freedom  at  small  cost  compared  with 
that  which  some  of  the  Christian  churches  of  our 
land  are  having  to  pay. 

One  such  momentous  change  that  has  come 
into  the  apprehension  of  our  churches  in  this  re- 
cent period  is  the  practical  obliteration  of  that 
line  once  so  sharply  drawn  between  the  natural 
and  the  supernatural.  God  is  recognized  as  in, 
and  of,  His  world,  immanent  in  all  its  on-goings 


[54] 

and  development ;  not  simply  as  one  sovereignly 
efficient  over  it,  as  the  creator  over  the  creation 
He  has  made.  Urged  by  Dr.  Bushnell  among 
us  in  a  modified  form,  more  than  fifty  years  ago, 
the  full  consequences  of  this  removal  of  a  line  of 
demarcation  between  two  supposedly  mutually 
exclusive  realms,  have  only  recently  been  per- 
ceived in  our  churches  generally. 

This  great  transformation,  fostered  as  it  has 
been  by  the  growth  of  an  idealistic  philosophy, 
has  undoubtedly  its  perils.  If  the  old  divine 
transcendence  was  in  danger  of  passing  into  De- 
ism, Pantheism  sometimes  lurks  near  the  divine 
immanence.  But  no  great  point  of  view  can  be 
free  from  the  possibility  of  perversion,  and  be  the 
peril  of  Pantheism  real  or  no,  a  wholly  new  view 
of  the  relation  of  God  to  His  world  has  silently 
won  its  way  among  us.  It  may  well  be  ques- 
tioned whether  the  most  fundamental  alteration 
that  has  come  over  our  thinking  is  not  its  change 
in  the  conception  of  God.  In  place  of  a  being 
exalted  high  above  a  world  separate  from  Him, 
whose  every  act  He  yet  arbitrarily  controls,  re- 
vealed in  miracle  and  theophany  to  ages  long  past ; 
we  have  One  in  and  of  His  world,  in  a  true  sense 
its  life,  manifesting  Himself  in  uniform  law  in 
what  we  call  the  realm  of  nature,  revealing  His 
moral  purpose  through  man,  who  is  the  best  ex- 
pression of  His  character,  and  above  all  in  the 
highest    and    holiest    of  men,    Our    Lord   Jesus 


[55] 

Christ.  What  man  is  at  his  noblest  and  truest, 
that  must  God  be,  and  through  what  is  best  in  man 
is  God  most  truly  to  be  perceived.  A  Jonathan 
Edwards  scarcely  raised  the  question  whether  the 
acts  of  the  divine  being  whose  ways  with  men  he 
sought  to  explain  were  to  be  brought  to  the  test 
of  moral  judgment.  They  were  the  ways  of  God 
as  he  read  them  in  his  interpretation  of  the 
Scriptures.  Even  a  quarter  of  a  century  ago  the 
question  was  asked  but  little  among  us.  But  to- 
day no  conception  of  Gods  character  which  does 
not  justify  itself  by  the  test  of  what  is  highest  in 
man  can  be  worthy  of  Him  who  has  made  us  in 
His  image,  and  has  best  revealed  Himself  through 
His  human  workmanship. 

But  the  tendencies  to  a  new  interpretation  of 
the  nature  of  God,  which  have  been  mentioned, 
the  present  emphasis  on  His  immanent  self- 
expression  through  humanity  and  the  oblitera- 
tion of  the  line  between  the  natural  and  the 
supernatural,  have  profoundly  modified  tradi- 
tional conceptions  of  the  person  of  Christ.  The 
controversies  which  raged  in  New  England  a 
century  ago,  the  results  of  which  colored  our 
thinking  till  within  the  last  quarter  of  a  century, 
are  now  seen  to  have  been  on  both  sides  due  to 
inadequate  perceptions  of  the  character  of  the 
person  with  which  they  had  to  do.  Sharply 
dividing  the  creator  from  the  range  of  created 
beings,  Unitarianism  insisted  on  Christ's  classifi- 


[56] 

cation  on  the  created  side  of  that  separating  gulf. 
He  was  a  man,  or  more  than  a  man,  the  highest 
even  of  angelic  beings,  but  He  was  not  and 
could  not  be  divine.  The  barrier  that  separated 
the  Godhead  from  the  lower  ranges  of  existence 
was,  to  its  thinking,  forever  impassable.  Ortho- 
dox New  England  conviction,  on  the  other  hand, 
while  insisting  on  a  true  humanity  in  Christ's 
mysterious  person,  so  emphasized  the  divine  na- 
ture in  Him  as  practically  to  make  that  the  more 
important,  and  to  place  Him  on  the  Godward 
side  of  the  divided  universe  in  all  the  more 
essential  characteristics  of  His  being.  His  divin- 
ity was  practically  exalted  at  the  expense  of  His 
humanity,  however  fully  His  oneness  with  men 
was  theoretically  asserted.  But,  in  the  altered 
view  which  the  last  quarter  of  a  century  has 
wrought  among  us,  the  ancient  division  of  the 
universe  has  vanished,  and  with  it  much  of  the 
old  demarcation  between  Unitarian  and  Ortho- 
dox. Christ  is  seen  to  be  not  perfect  God  mys- 
teriously joined  with  perfect  man,  but  the  perfect 
revelation  of  God  in  all  those  divine  attributes 
which  are  capable  of  expression  in  a  human  life, 
because  the  highest  manifestation  of  a  humanity 
through  which  God  has  been  forever  revealing 
Himself.  In  seeing  Him  we  perceive  both  what 
God  is  and  man  may  be.  His  office  is  no  less 
unique,  His  character  no  less  exalted,  the  rever- 
ence which  we  pay  Him  no  less  profound,  be- 


[57] 

cause  we  have  in  Him  humanity's  crowning 
manifestation,  which  is,  just  because  it  is  such, 
our  most  majestic  revelation  of  the  character  of 
God.  A  God  who  is  not  in  moral  nature  what 
Jesus  is,  is  to  us  unthinkable  ;  a  manhood  which 
does  not  see  in  Jesus  the  ideal  to  which  it  aspires 
is  a  manhood  that  has  never  perceived  the  pattern 
for  which  it  was  created. 

No  less  significant  is  the  transformation  that 
has  come  over  our  conception  of  the  nature  and 
place  of  man.  The  older  Galvinistic  view  of 
man  as  wholly  depraved  and  alienated  from  God 
bv  nature,  powerful  in  our  churches  a  century 
ago,  had  indeed  become  much  attenuated  by  the 
beginning  of  the  pastorate  which  we  now  honor. 
None  among  us  would  then  have  asserted,  as 
Jonathan  Edwards  did,  that  "wicked  men  are 
useful  in  their  destruction  only,"  or  as  was  de- 
clared in  the  early  days  of  our  great  Missionary 
Board  to  be  a  chief  incentive  to  the  propagation 
of  the  Gospel,  that  the  heathen  were  dropping 
hopelessly  into  hell.  A  larger  hope  was  even 
then  prevalent.  But  current  Congregational  be- 
lief held  that  this  life  fixed  the  issues  of  character 
forever,  and,  in  spite  of  Bushnell's  assertion  of 
Christian  Nurture  as  the  normal  method  of  en- 
trance on  the  Kingdom  of  God,  widely  looked 
upon  a  radical  "change  of  heart"  as  the  essen- 
tial transition  from  a  status  of  "children  of 
wrath"   to   that  of  "sons  of  God."     We  owe 


[58] 

something  of  our  altered  view  to  Charming' s 
assertion  of  the  dignity  of  human  nature,  and 
more  to  the  teaching  of  such  leaders  as  Robertson 
and  Maurice  that  all  men  are  sons  of  the  Father, 
needing  the  realization  of  their  sonship  that  they 
may  take  the  filial  part.  But,  most  of  all,  we 
owe  to  our  changed  conception  of  God  Himself, 
"who  hateth  nothing  that  He  hath  made,"  who 
must  reach  forth  with  fatherly  pity  to  all  His 
children,  not  to  a  chosen  people  or  an  elect  few, 
but  to  all  to  whom  He  has  given  life  and  made 
in  His  image.  Wofully  defaced  that  image  often 
is.  Rebellious  and  astray  those  sons  often  are. 
Needing  the  divine  forgiveness,  the  cleansing  only 
God  can  give,  the  utmost  grace  He  can  bestow, 
they  yet  are  sons,  whom  the  Father  seeks  to 
draw  to  the  Father's  house.  If  any  stay  forever 
outside  the  Father's  home,  the  cause  must  be  in 
their  resistance  to  His  call,  not  in  any  failure  on 
His  part  to  seek,  or  any  decree  of  omnipotence 
that  they  shall  be  passed  by,  or  any  limitation  of 
His  efforts  for  their  redemption  to  the  span  of  a 
few  years  of  earthly  existence.  We  do  not  re- 
gard men  as  needing  the  grace  of  God  less  than 
those  who  went  before  us  did ;  but  we  trust  that 
we  comprehend  the  divine  attitude  toward  and 
estimate  of  men  better  than  they.  A  humanity 
that  is  always  the  object  of  God's  fatherly  solici- 
tude, that  in  its  noblest  expressions  is  a  revelation 
of  the  character  of  God  Himself,  and  in  its  wid- 


[59] 
est  estrangements  is  not  beyond  His  outreaching 
love,  is  of  infinite  dignity  and  worth,  if  not  for 
what  it  often  is,  at  least  for  what  by  His  grace  it 
may  become. 

No  less  striking  has  been  the  change  which  has 
taken  place  in  our  New  England  Congregational 
churches  during  the  period  under  consideration 
regarding  the  Bible.  Here,  too,  the  transforma- 
tion has  been  nothing  peculiar  to  this  region. 
It  is  but  a  part  of  a  general  world-movement 
in  scholarship.  Twenty-five  years  ago  the  old 
plenary  theory  of  exact  verbal  inspiration  was, 
indeed,  largely  gone,  though  the  speaker  remem- 
bers being  taught  in  the  theological  seminary,  at 
a  time  well  subsequent  to  the  beginning  of  the 
pastorate  to-day  commemorated,  the  literal  accu- 
racy of  the  ages  of  antediluvian  patriarchs  as 
given  in  the  early  chapters  of  Genesis.  But  the 
general  attitude  toward  the  Bible  was  then  vastly 
unlike  that  at  present.  The  results  of  the  patient 
investigation  which  we  call  the  higher  criticism, 
first  of  the  Old  and  later  of  the  New  Testament 
have  won  their  way  till  they  have  become  part  of 
the  mental  furnishing  not  merely  of  our  ministry 
but  of  a  large  portion  of  our  laymen.  We  see 
in  the  Bible  the  record  of  the  highest  religious 
experience  of  the  race ;  written  at  most  various 
times,  and  under  widely  differing  conditions  of 
culture,  by  men  of  anything  but  uniform  clear- 
ness of  spiritual  discernment,  —  a   literature  of 


[6o] 

religion,  not  a  simple  book.  We  hold  it  price- 
less because  it  gives  to  us  the  life  of  our  Lord 
Jesus  Christ,  and  the  impression  which  He  made 
on  the  early  disciples.  That  wonderful  picture 
comes  to  us  not  by  the  medium  of  historians 
miraculously  kept  from  error,  but  as  every  other 
great  historical  portrait  is  given  to  us,  by  the  pens 
of  men  who  strove  to  hand  down  what  they 
deemed  of  value  to  themselves  or  of  service  to 
their  times.  Errors  in  detail,  individuality  of 
emphasis  we  readily  admit ;  but  nowhere  else 
can  we  go  for  the  knowledge  of  the  noblest  life 
humanity  has  witnessed,  and  the  certainly  assured 
story  is  amply  sufficient  for  acquaintance  with 
that  life  in  its  essential  character.  Nor  do  we 
now  deem  it  a  disadvantage  that  prophets  and 
apostles  seem  to  us  far  less  mysterious  vehicles 
of  a  peculiar  inspiration  than  they  did  to  our 
predecessors,  and  appear  much  more  those  who 
have  drunk  deeply  of  the  great  spiritual  springs 
which  are  in  some  measure  available  for  all. 
The  Bible  speaks  to  experience  and  life  as  never 
before ;  but  the  change  in  attitude  towards  it 
which  a  quarter  of  a  century  has  wrought  is  as 
great  as  it  is  widely  extended  and  apparently 
permanent. 

Quite  as  significant  as  the  altered  conception 
of  the  Bible  has  been  the  change  which  this 
epoch  has  wrought  in  the  view  of  the  nature  of 
that  salvation  which  is  the  purpose  of  the  Gospel. 


[6t] 

We  no  longer  regard  it  as  a  rescue  of  a  select 
body  here  and  there  gathered  from  a  fallen  hu- 
manity. The  development  of  individual  charac- 
ter, of  personal  allegiance  and  loyalty  to  Christ, 
must  always  be  a  main  purpose  of  the  church, 
but  it  is  no  longer,  as  it  was,  its  exclusive  pur- 
pose. Nor  can  we  view  this  world  as  merely  a 
place  of  trial  and  struggle,  the  miseries  of  which 
are  to  be  compensated  by  the  joys  of  a  hereafter 
blessedness.  The  world  itself  is  an  object  of 
redemption.  The  prayer  of  the  Christian  is  not 
that  he  may  escape  from  it  as  speedily  as  God 
wills  ;  but  that  God's  kingdom  come  and  His  will 
be  done  "  on  earth  as  it  is  in  heaven."  It  is  no 
unjust  disparagement  of  the  noble  philanthropic 
and  reformatory  efforts  in  operation  twenty-five 
years  ago  to  recognize  that  the  duty  of  the  church 
to  labor  for  a  redeemed  social  order  in  this  pres- 
ent world  is  now  appreciated  as  was  not  then  the 
case.  The  salvation  of  the  Gospel  must  be  great 
enough  not  merely  to  fit  some  men  for  heaven ;  it 
must  make  this  world,  what  it  is  not  now,  a  reign 
of  righteousness,  peace,  and  joy  in  the  Holy  Spirit. 
The  duty  of  the  church  to  labor  to  right  ancient 
wrongs,  to  foster  principles  of  justice  in  the  re- 
lations of  man  with  man  and  class  with  class,  to 
further  endeavors  for  social  betterment,  is  now 
recognized  as  it  has  never  been  before. 

This  recognition  of  the  enlarged  obligation  of 
the  church  toward  men  as  a  whole  in  the  social 


[62] 

organizations  of  the  present,  involving  as  it  does 
no  small  change  in  the  conception  of  what  is 
salvation,  has,  for  the  time  at  least,  put  upon  the 
church  a  burden  which  its  older  ideals  in  this 
respect  have  little  fitted  it  to  bear.  No  wonder 
that  the  institutions  of  religion  which  have  grown 
up  among  us  under  the  thought  of  salvation  as 
well-nigh  exclusively  the  rescue  of  individuals 
from  a  mass  of  fallen  humanity,  and  their  train- 
ing for  a  heavenly  citizenship  hereafter,  are 
adapted  only  with  strain  and  difficulty  to  the 
work  of  social  regeneration  on  any  considerable 
scale  in  the  world  of  the  present.  The  churches 
feel  the  call  in  ever-increasing  measure,  but  they 
do  not  know  where  to  begin  or  to  what  work 
they  can  effectively  lay  their  hands.  Many  of  our 
contemporaries,  conscious,  even  though  blindly, 
that  the  church  should  be  a  leader  in  social  re- 
adjustment, criticise  and  condemn  it  as  recreant 
to  its  dutv,  as  designed  for  the  service  of  the  few 
rather  than  of  the  many,  and  as  to  be  superseded 
by  more  modern  agencies  of  human  betterment. 
Such  criticism  is  largely  unjust  if  it  implies 
lack  of  good-will  in  the  church.  The  spirit  of 
wide-reaching  service  to  humanity,  in  the  better- 
ment of  the  world  in  which  we  live,  was  never 
more  felt.  The  desire  to  do  this  Christlike  work 
was  never  more  active  or  dominant  in  the  church. 
We  may  trust  that  an  ever-increasing  clearness 
of  vision  as  to  the  needs  of  the  world  may  lead 


[63] 

to  a  rapidly  developing  efficiency  in  service,  so 
that  the  maladjustments  and  inefficiencies  of  the 
present  may  speedily  be  overcome,  as  the  church 
enters  on  its  larger  work.  For  the  church  alone 
has  those  gifts  of  the  Spirit  to  bestow  without 
which  mere  material  betterment  is  but  imperfect 
gain,  and  which  are  of  all  good  things  the  best 
that  may  be  offered  to  men.  We  want  not 
merely  a  more  comfortable  and  a  juster  social 
order ;  we  need  to  have  it  suffused  with  the  spirit 
of  Christ,  and  this  must  be  forever  primarily  the 
work  of  the  church. 

The  observer  of  changes  in  theology  dur- 
ing the  period  of  this  pastorate  must  have  been 
impressed  with  another  fact,  that  these  modifica- 
tions of  theologic  interpretation  have  worked 
powerfully  to  foster  the  spirit  of  comradeship 
between  the  various  flocks  of  our  divided  Chris- 
tian heritage.  Ecclesiastical  barriers  which  were 
still  strong  twenty-five  years  ago  have  marvel- 
ously  weakened.  The  lines  of  separation,  once 
deemed  so  vital,  are  crumbling  before  the  new 
sense  of  Christian  brotherhood.  We  see  the 
relatively  non-essential  nature  of  much  that 
seemed  of  supreme  importance  to  those  who 
went  before  us.  Any  large  degree  of  unity  or 
even  of  federation  between  the  far  too  multitudi- 
nous ecclesiastical  organizations  of  New  England 
is  yet  in  the  future ;  but  he  who  has  appreciated 
the  changes  in   spirit  one  towards  another  be- 


[64] 

tween  Christians  of  different  denominational 
names,  which  the  time  of  this  pastorate  has  wit- 
nessed, can  but  feel  confident  that  a  mutual 
cooperation  far  exceeding  what  was  once  deemed 
possible  is  soon  to  be  ours. 

Such  a  period  as  we  have  reviewed  is  evidently 
one  of  transition;  and,  because  so,  one  of  trial 
and  perplexity  for  many.  The  process  of  theo- 
logical readjustment  is  always  a  painful  one. 
For  many,  it  is  one  of  much  more  than  pain. 
To  many  during  the  last  twenty-five  years,  to 
many  now,  it  seems  as  if  the  foundations  were 
being  removed.  Their  faith  and  hope  have  been 
sorely  tried,  even  though  they  trust  that  "the 
removing  of  those  things  that  are  shaken  "  may 
be  divinely  intended  ' '  that  those  things  which 
cannot  be  shaken  may  remain."  It  is  impossible 
not  to  sympathize  profoundly  with  those  who 
are  passing  through  this  experience.  There  has 
been  not  a  little  of  what  may  be  called  theologi- 
cal chaos  in  the  last  twenty-five  years.  More- 
over, we  have  come  to  no  completion  of  the 
process  of  sifting  and  readjustment  as  yet.  We 
are  still  in  the  midst  of  its  onward  flow,  even 
if  the  main  characteristics  of  the  newer  theologi- 
cal structure  among  us  may  now  be  regarded  as 
approaching  fixity. 

That  the  perplexing  period  under  review  has 
been  so  well  passed,  on  the  whole,  is  due  to  the 
bold  and  courageous  work  of  those  who,  feeling 


[65] 

the  old  was  slipping  away,  have  dared  to  formu- 
late our  faith  in  altered  form  and  in  constructive 
expression  suited  to  our  age.  They  have  known 
how  to  restate  the  verities  which  are  abiding  and 
eternal  in  terms  to  which  men  can  now  assent, 
and  in  presentations  adapted  to  our  modern 
thought.  When  one  surveys  their  work,  the 
impression  is  how  relatively  unimportant  after 
all  have  been  the  changes  which  have  seemed  to 
us  so  great.  The  mighty  essentials  of  Christian 
discipleship,  loyalty  to  Christ,  filial  love  toward 
God,  brotherly  helpfulness  towards  one's  fellow- 
men,  the  achievement  of  Christian  character,  the 
blessedness  of  Christian  service,  stand  forth  in  a 
clearness  never  before  surpassed.  We  are  linked 
in  Christian  experience,  however  we  may  be 
sundered  in  doctrinal  interpretation,  with  the 
Christian  discipleship  of  all  the  ages. 

Conspicuous  above  all  other  personalities  in 
the  constructive  forces  of  New  England  in  the 
last  quarter  of  a  century  has  been  he  whom  we 
honor  to-day.  Our  foremost  preacher-theologian, 
he  has  laid  the  foundations  deep  and  builded  true, 
and  he  has  thereby  placed  us  immeasurably  in  his 
debt.  His  philosophic  insight,  his  theologic  acu- 
men, his  confident  faith,  have  won  for  him  not 
merely  the  admiration  but  the  trust  of  multitudes 
to  whom  he  has  spoken  through  the  written  page 
in  far  wider  circles  than  even  those  which  he  has 
reached  by  the  living  voice.      He  has  witnessed 


[66] 

to  the  dignity  of  man  as  the  interpreter  of  God 
and  nature,  to  the  uniqueness  of  Christ  as  the 
revelation  of  God  in  the  terms  of  a  human  life, 
to  the  universality  of  the  divine  fatherhood,  and 
to  the  tremendous  realities  of  sin  and  redemption, 
with  a  power  and  a  persuasiveness  that  have  made 
him  a  pillar  of  strength  in  an  age  of  theological 
unrest  and  restatement  such  as  has  not  been  ex- 
perienced since  the  Reformation.  He  has  bade 
us  look  on  this  world  with  a  Christian  optimism 
that  it  may  be  made  the  Kingdom  of  God,  and 
on  the  next  with  a  confident  trust  based  on  the 
character  of  God  Himself,  and  adding  a  glory  and 
a  significance  to  this  earthly  life.  He  has  made 
faith  easier,  and  hope  more  confident,  and  God 
more  real  to  many.  You  of  this  church  of  his 
immediate  pastorate  may  well  endeavor  on  this 
memorable  anniversary  to  convey  to  him  some 
sense  of  the  reverence  in  which  you  hold  him  as 
a  preacher  and  a  pastor  ;  but  the  honor  due  him 
would  be  incomplete  were  we  of  the  larger  New 
England  not  also  to  express  to  him,  however  im- 
perfectly, our  gratitude  for  his  services  as  a  Chris- 
tian seer  and  as  our  chief  of  living  theologians. 
May  the  work  so  nobly  carried  for- 
ward for  the  last  quarter  of  a 
century  be  granted  many 
a  year  of  increasing 
usefulness. 


THE    MAN    FOR    THE    PULPIT 
OF    TO-DAY 


MR.  HARDY,  in  introducing  Prof.  Daniel  Evans, 
D.D.,  ofAndover  Theological  Seminary,  who  spoke  on 
"  The  Man  for  the  Pulpit  of  To-day,"  referred  to 
Dr.  Gordons  reputation  among  clergy  and  laity  alike 
as  one  whose  ministry  was  conspicuous  for  its  relation 
to  contemporary  life. 


PROFESSOR   EVANS'   ADDRESS 


T 


HERE  is  a  new  appreciation  at  the  present 
time  of  the  significance  and  the  worth  of 
man  everywhere.  The  philosopher  is  be- 
ginning to  realize  that  the  most  significant  thing 
of  this  universe  is  personality.  Great  as  the 
flaming  star  may  be,  it  is  not  as  great  as  the  en- 
kindling mind  of  man,  and  marvelous  as  may  be 
the  mechanism  of  this  vast  universe,  it  is  not  as 
marvelous  as  the  heart  of  man.  And  great  as 
may  be  the  light  that  flashes  from  the  sky,  it 
is  not  as  great  as  the  light  that  flashes  from  the 
conscience  of  man.  There  has  been  a  practical 
recognition  of  the  worth  of  man  parallel  to  this 
philosophical  appreciation.  We  are  beginning 
to  discover  that  man  is  of  great  worth  indeed  ; 
that  he  is  the  most  important  factor  in  our  whole 
civilization  ;  that  back  of  the  machine  there  must 
be  a  mind,  and  that  the  whole  machinery  of 
civilization  exists  for  the  welfare  of  man.  His 
character  and  condition  at  any  age  become  the 
standard  and  test  of  the  character  of  that  civiliza- 
tion. We  know  full  well,  for  example,  that  at 
the  present  time  the  most  important  fact  in  our 
democracy  is  not  the  machinery  of  government, 


[?o] 

but  it  is  the  man  who  is  ruling ;  that  the  most 
important  fact  of  our  education  is  not  the  educa- 
tional system,  nor  our  great  buildings,  but  it  is 
the  living  man  who  is  there  teaching  or  there 
guiding  and  ruling.  It  is  not  strange,  there- 
fore, that  in  religion  the  same  truth  should  be 
recognized,  and  at  the  present  time  we  are  be- 
ginning to  discover,  however  great  may  be  the 
machinery  of  the  church,  the  church  cannot  do 
its  work  by  any  machinery,  but  must  do  it  by 
the  human  personality  that  is  behind  it  and  work- 
ing through  it. 

At  the  present  time  there  is  much  depreciation 
of  the  minister  as  an  ecclesiastic  official  of  re- 
ligion ;  he  does  not  have  the  same  high  place 
that  he  once  had  ;  his  words  do  not  have  au- 
thority—  merely  because  it  is  a  minister  who  is 
speaking  the  words :  but  at  the  same  time  there 
has  been  a  deepening  recognition  by  the  people 
of  the  man  in  the  pulpit.  Indeed,  it  is  the  man 
in  the  pulpit  who  has  always  had  this  great 
power.  It  is  through  man  that  God  has  spoken 
his  great  truth  and  has  imparted  his  great  love  to 
the  world ;  and  you  can  trace  the  flaming  course 
of  the  revelation  of  God  and  the  upward  move- 
ment of  civilization  by  seeing  the  course  that  the 
procession  and  succession  of  the  great  prophets 
of  God  have  taken  through  the  ages  from  the 
time  that  man  turned  his  face  towards  God,  con- 
quered by  the  vision  of  the  Eternal,  to  our  own 


[7«] 

time  and  generation.  Here  in  New  England  the 
churches  have  been  very  fortunate  in  having 
striking  personalities  in  the  pulpits.  We  conjure 
up  before  our  imagination,  for  example,  such  a 
mighty  thinker  and  great  mystic  as  Jonathan 
Edwards,  such  men  as  Emmons,  Bushnell, 
Beecher,  Ghanning,  Parker,  and  Brooks.  And 
in  this  great  and  noble  procession  and  succession 
is  the  pastor  of  this  historic  church. 

In  order  to  have  the  pulpit  become  a  power  in 
the  community,  the  church  must  try  to  secure  a 
succession  of  large  personalities.  I  remark  that 
the  first  quality  or  element  of  the  man  in  the 
pulpit  at  the  present  time  must  be  his  profound 
humanity.  He  must  be  a  man  of  deep  and  wide 
sympathy.  He  must  be  profoundly  interested  in 
human  life.  His  soul  must  go  out  to  human 
beings  who  are  round  about  him.  He  must  have 
respect  for  the  people  to  whom  he  is  preaching  ; 
he  must  enter  into  their  hearts  and  understand 
their  lives.  The  great  facts  about  human  life 
must  become  the  dominant  conceptions  and  great 
ideals  of  his  own  soul.  Birth,  with  all  its  mys- 
tery ;  childhood,  without  a  cloud  in  its  sky  ; 
youth,  smitten  by  the  beauty  of  the  ideal ;  strong 
men  and  women,  upon  whose  shoulders  are  the 
heavy  responsibilities  and  tasks  of  life;  and  the 
old  man  coming  near  to  the  end  of  his  career, 
with  the  light  of  God  streaming  out  from  the 
Eternal  world  upon  him, —  all  these  must  become 


[72] 
the  great  and  glorious  thoughts  and  ideals   and 
interests  of  his  own  life. 

When  I  think  of  the  demands  that  are  made 
upon  the  minister,  the  life  he  has  to  live,  I  am 
profoundly  impressed  by  the  fact  that  he  also 
needs  sanity.  There  are  so  many  currents  of 
thought  which  are  constantly  changing :  the 
passion  to  do  good  starts  so  many  strange  move- 
ments ;  the  ambition  to  make  one's  church  pop- 
ular makes  a  man  have  recourse  to  unholy 
experiments  ;  the  effort  to  crowd  one's  church 
by  popular  methods  often  endangers  a  man's  hold 
upon  the  eternities  ;  the  critical  moral  situation 
in  which  many  a  man  finds  himself  makes  him 
realize  that  the  one  great  quality  which  he  must 
have  is  sanity. 

No  true  man  in  the  ministry  ever  goes  very 
long  without  thinking  seriously  about  the  temp- 
tations that  come  to  him.  There  is  a  strain  and 
sometimes  a  great  moral  overstrain.  Not  com- 
mon, vulgar  temptations  of  life,  but  subtler 
temptations  of  the  spirit  come  to  the  man  in  the 
ministry.  One  of  the  noblest  men  in  the  min- 
istry has  said  that  there  ought  to  be  a  new  peti- 
tion added  to  the  Litany  :  ' '  From  the  '  clerical 
mind,'  Good  Lord,  deliver  us  !  '  Now  the 
"clerical  mind''  is  a  mind  concerned  primarily 
with  the  uses  of  its  ideas ;  it  does  not  take  into 
account  the  reality  of  its  ideas  ;  it  is  concerned 
not  with  the  moral  worth  of  impression   that  it 


[73] 

may  make  nor  the  moral  means  it  may  use  for 
the  making  of  the  impression ;  it  is  so  concerned 
about  making  a  point  that  often  it  does  not  care 
whether  it  tells  the  truth  !  It  is  so  concerned 
about  the  things  which  are  traditional  that  it  does 
not  go  back  to  the  everlasting  realities  which 
were  the  moving  principles  in  the  minds  of  the 
men  who  gave  us  their  imperfect  understanding 
of  them.  Intellectual  Jesuitism,  moral  senti- 
mentalism,  and  spiritual  unreality  are  the  vices 
of  the  clerical  mind.  It  was  in  view  of  this  fact 
that  Bushnell  said  a  man  ought  to  have  a  talent 
of  conscience  for  the  ministry  and  ought  to  have 
an  astronomical  conscience,  true  and  steady  in 
its  movement  in  the  great  orbit,  like  the  stars  in 
the  heavens.  It  is  because  there  has  been  a  man 
here  with  a  talent  of  conscience,  with  an  astro- 
nomical conscience  that  he  and  you  have  been 
delivered  from  the  "clerical  mind."  He  has 
hated  a  lie  and  loved  the  truth ;  despised  senti- 
mentalism  and  appreciated  sentiment ;  he  has 
had  light  for  the  man  who  is  perplexed,  enlight- 
enment for  the  man  who  is  perverted  ;  and  so  he 
has  been,  as  your  Chairman  says,  the  man  who 
has  spoken  to  the  conscience. 

Another  element  which  the  man  of  the  pulpit 
for  to-day  needs  —  strange  that  I  should  say  it — 
is  to  be  profoundly  religious.  Time  was  when  a 
man  could  be  a  minister,  whether  he  was  reli- 
gious or  not ;   his  official  position  made  him  the 


[7M 

minister.  It  gave  him  a  strange  relationship 
with  God  ;  he  had  a  private  privilege  with  the 
Eternal  ;  but  intelligent  men,  whose  consciences 
are  developed  and  whose  souls  are  sensitive, 
know  perfectly  well  that  as  democracy  has  robbed 
the  king  of  his  divine  right,  so  democracy  has 
robbed  the  priest  of  his  mitre.  And  every  soul, 
however  humble  and  obscure  its  place,  has  as 
much  divine  right  with  God  as  the  man  who  holds 
the  highest  ecclesiastical  position  in  the  world. 

The  man  who  enters  the  ministry  at  the  pres- 
ent time  must  have  intellectual  greatness  and 
courage.  We  are  living  in  a  new-thought  world  ; 
it  is  infinite  in  extent,  eternal  in  duration,  uni- 
versal in  its  law  ;  abiding  ;  it  is  moving  out  from 
God,  sustained  by  God  and  constantly  coming 
nearer  to  the  goal  that  he  has  set  for  it.  A  paro- 
chial mind  in  a  modern  pulpit  when  the  intelli- 
gent men  of  the  audience  are  at  home  in  the 
universe,  is  in  the  wrong  place.  There  are  two 
kinds  of  minds  :  minds  that  are  like  the  fowls  of 
the  backyard,  whose  wings  are  now  of  no  use 
and  whose  only  environment  is  the  enclosed  place 
where  they  move  back  and  forth  ;  which  they 
think  is  a  big  world.  There  is  another  type 
of  mind;  it  is  the  eagle  type,  that  has  as  its  en- 
vironment the  infinite  sky  above  it  and  makes 
its  nest  upon  the  craggy  peaks,  catching  the  first 
light  of  the  sun  in  the  morning  and  receiving  the 
last  light  at  night  in  its  eyes  to  thrill  its  heart. 


[75] 

So  there  are  parochial  minds  that  are  concerned 
about  small  things,  and  there  are  the  eagle  type 
of  minds  that  soar  in  the  great  eternal  realm. 
The  mind  of  the  man  in  this  pulpit  is  the  com- 
panion of  suns  and  moons  and  stars  :  going 
through  the  great  realms  of  truth,  having  a 
grasp  upon  the  things  which  are  spiritual  and 
eternal,  thinking  nothing  of  wiping  off  from  the 
slate,  as  the  boy  does  in  school,  eons  of  time, 
solar  systems,  the  whole  shining  universe,  to  get 
back  at  the  original  and  aboriginal  ground  of  all 
being,  all  thought,   and  all  love. 

It  is  not  surprising,  therefore,  that  there  has 
been  a  great  influence  from  this  pulpit.  The  man 
in  it  has  done  a  great  deal  to  maintain  the  dignity 
and  honor  of  the  ministry.  It  is  the  first  duty  of 
every  man  in  any  profession  to  be  true  to  his  own 
profession  ;  to  maintain  its  obligations,  to  keep 
its  honor  and  see  that  it  shall  not  be  degraded. 
Dr.  Gordon  has  done  a  great  deal  to  maintain 
the  dignity  of  the  pulpit  at  a  time  when  people 
put  a  decreasing  value  upon  the  power  of  the 
pulpit,  and  when  rival  agencies,  outside  the 
church,  have  become  substitutes  for  a  large  num- 
ber of  people ;  when  persons  in  the  pulpit  itself 
have  given  themselves  up  to  doing  the  ' '  small 
work"  of  the  church,  some  of  them  going  into 
the  ' '  millinery  "  business.  It  is  a  great  thing  to 
have  a  pulpit  that  stands  for  the  function  of 
teaching  and  of  keeping  men  face  to  face  with 


[76] 
God  at  a  time  when  the  tendency  has  been  to 
depreciate  the  value  and  the  power  of  the  church. 

It  is  because  the  pastor  of  this  church  has  had 
deep  sympathies  and  wide,  that  the  people  have 
gathered  here  in  such  large  numbers  to-night,  and 
that  it  is  so  easy  to  detect  ministers  as  we  look 
over  the  assembly.  It  is  because  the  young  min- 
isters especially  have  felt  that  in  the  pastor  of 
this  church  they  have  a  big  brother  to  whom  they 
can  go  for  advice  and  counsel,  to  whom  they 
can  go  for  inspiration  and  direction,  that  we 
delight  to  honor  him  as  we  do  this  night.  The 
reason  is  because  he  is  a  lover  of  humanity  ;  he 
does  not  despise  nor  condemn  the  great  mass  of 
human  beings,  but  looks  upon  them  with  com- 
passion. He  has  not  forgotten  the  quarry  out 
of  which  he  was  hewn,  nor  the  hole  of  the  pit 
whence  he  was  digged.  There  is  a  song  often 
on  his  lips,  because  it  goes  singing  in  his  heart 
always,  the  song  of  his  countrymen  —  "A  Man 's 
a  Man,  for  a'  That ! 

The  man  in  this  pulpit  has  had  the  Greek 
virtue  of  temperance  :  the  mind  is  central  over 
all  the  passions  and  all  the  powers  of  the  body 
and  of  the  soul  and  the  will,  with  its  grip  upon 
the  rudder,  keeping  his  ship  from  going  on  the 
rocks  and  ready  to  breast  each  successive  wave 
that  comes.  And  the  reason  why  the  men  who 
serve  the  ideal  interests  of  the  community  have 
confidence  in   him  is  because   he  has  not  been 


[77] 
driven  by  the  storm,  nor  has  he  drifted  with  the 
currents,  but  has  kept  his  boat  directed  toward 
the  distant  haven  before  him. 

The  passion  of  the  man  who  preaches  in  this 
pulpit  is  for  God !      The  only  vision  he  craves  is 
the  vision  of  God  —  the  vision  of  the  mind  that 
is  Infinite  for  the  good  of  his  own  intellect;   the 
vision  of  the  Eternal  heart  for  the  peace  of  his 
own  heart ;  the  vision  of  the  power  of  God  for 
the  strength  of  his  own  will  ;   the  vision  of  the 
absolute    righteousness    of   the    Eternal   for   the 
everlasting  conservation  of  all  the  dear,   human 
interests  that  he  cherishes  :   and  that  is  the  secret 
of  his  growing  serenity  and  his  deepening  power 
and    peace    as    he    ministers    to    you  year    after 
year.     If    the    time    was    when    men    felt    they 
could    not    live   if    they   saw    God, 
the    time    has    come    when 
men  cannot  live  un- 
less they  see 
God. 


THE  PURITAN  CHURCH  AND  THE 
PURITAN  COLLEGE 


MR.  HARDY,  in  introducing  President  Eliot  of 
Harvard  University,  who  spoke  on  ' '  The  Puritan 
Church  and  the  Puritan  College,"  referred  to  Presi- 
dent Eliot  s  relation  to  the  committee,  which,  acting 
for  the  church,  recommended  Dr.  Gordon  as  pastor. 
" President  Eliot,"  he  said,  "did  early  mention  Dr. 
Gordon's  name  to  a  member  of  that  committee.  The 
committee  investigated  for  themselves.  The  Old  South 
Church  welcomes  the  presence  of  President  Eliot  here, 
to-night,  for  his  own  sake,  and  because  of  his  long 
friendship  with  Dr.  Gordon." 


PRESIDENT   ELIOT'S  ADDRESS 

THE  subject  assigned  to  me  to-night  is  "  The 
Puritan  Church  and  the  Puritan  College." 
I  want  to  read  as  a  text  the  inscription  which 
stands  on  the  gate  of  Harvard  College.  It  is  an 
extract  from  a  little  book  entitled,  "First  Fruits 
of  New  England."  I  read  this  in  order  to  show 
what  the  Puritan  College  did  for  the  Puritan 
Church. 

44  After  God  had  carried  us  safe  to  New  England, 
and  we  had  builded  our  houses,  and  provided  neces- 
saries for  our  livelihood,  reared  convenient  places  for 
God's  worship,  and  settled  the  civil  government ;  one 
of  the  next  things  we  longed  for  and  looked  after  was 
to  advance  learning  and  to  perpetuate  it  to  posterity ; 
dreading  to  leave  an  illiterate  ministry  to  the  churches 
when  our  present  ministers  shall  lie  in  the  dust." 

Observe  the  order  of  these  provisions.  The  order 
is  very  sane,  to  use  one  of  Dr.  Evans'  words. 
The  first  thing  they  did  was  to  build  their  houses, 
the  shelter  from  the  fierce  New  England  climate. 
Next,  they  provided  the  necessaries  for  their  live- 
lihood ;  like  prudent  men,  thoughtful  men,  they 
provided   for    the   livelihood    of    their    families. 


[8a] 

Then,  they  reared  convenient  places  for  God's 
worship  ;  they  built  meeting-houses  for  the  Puri- 
tan people  to  worship  in.  And,  fourthly,  they 
settled  the  civil  government.  Conceive  what  that 
meant  in  the  year  i63o!  Remember  what  was 
going  on  in  England  at  that  time  I  Remember 
what  was  going  on  in  France  under  the  mon- 
archy !  Study  the  comparative  legislation  in 
different  nations  at  that  period,  and  then  you  will 
wonder  at  the  achievement  of  that  little  group  of 
English  colonists.  They  settled  the  civil  govern- 
ment. And  then  they  took  thought  for  the  col- 
lege— the  Puritan  College  which  was  to  breed  a 
ministry  for  the  churches  worthy  to  succeed  the 
educated  ministers  who  came  from  England  with 
the  colony.  Now  that  is  what  the  Puritan  Col- 
lege did  for  the  Puritan  churches  for  centuries. 
The  Puritan  College  provided  the  educated  min- 
isters for  two  hundred  years  :  but  what  prodigious 
changes  went  on  in  those  two  hundred  years! 
Come  down  to  i836,  and  how  the  sentiments  of 
the  community  had  changed  !  How  the  govern- 
ment itself  had  changed,  settled  though  they 
thought  it  to  be  in  i636  !  How  human  knowl- 
edge had  developed  !  The  Puritan  College  was 
a  very  different  thing  two  centuries  after  the  foun- 
dation of  this  settled  government  in  New  England. 
The  Puritan  College  had  taken  to  itself  a  great 
mass  of  various  knowledges  altogether  new  in  the 
world  since  the  Puritan  churches  had  been  estab- 


[83] 

lished  in  New  England.  The  world  —  the  civil- 
ized world — had  learnt  the  most  important 
lesson  it  has  ever  learnt,  namely,  toleration  in 
religion. 

Let  me  remind  you  that  it  is  scarcely  more 
than  seventy  years  since  a  mob  went  out  from 
this  town  of  Boston  and  burnt  a  Catholic  Convent 
in  Charlestown  in  the  middle  of  the  night.  Let 
me  remind  you  that  the  relations  between  the 
Catholic  Irish  and  the  Protestant  Americans  in 
Boston  were  so  fierce,  only  about  seventy  years 
ago,  that  a  mob  engaged  in  the  sacking  of  Irish 
tenements  in  Broad  street  of  a  Sunday  afternoon, 
the  occasion  being  the  breaking  through  an  Irish 
funeral  by  an  American  fire  company.  I  say 
that  this  Puritan  community  had  learnt,  when  the 
nineteenth  century  was  half  over,  the  immense 
lesson  of  religious  toleration.  The  Puritan  Col- 
lege had  learnt  another  thing,  — the  most  impor- 
tant lesson  as  to  the  discovery  of  truth  that  the 
human  race  has  thus  far  learnt,  — it  had  learnt 
the  way  to  truth.  I  wonder  if  many  persons  in 
this  congregation  ever  heard  the  delightful  story 
that  President  Pritchett  used  to  tell  to  the  young 
men  entering  the  Institute  of  Technology  at  the 
beginning  of  the  year.  He  told  how  he  was  once 
going  over  the  Gemmi  pass,  one  of  the  most 
beautiful  and  striking  passes  in  Switzerland ;  it 
goes  up  from  Leukerbad,  and  descends  on  the 
other  side  to  a  village  called  Kandersteg.     Dr. 


[84] 

Pritchett  was  mounting  this  pass  on  foot,  and 
alone.  He  got  to  the  head  of  the  pass,  where  to 
his  surprise  the  way  forked,  and  he  did  not  know 
which  path  to  take.  To  a  Swiss  boy  coming  by 
Dr.  Pritchett  said,  "My  boy,  where  is  Kander- 
steg?"  "I  do  not  know,  sir,"  said  the  boy  ;  "I 
never  was  there,  but  that  is  the  way  to  it!" 
That  is  what  the  human  race  has  learnt  concern- 
ing truth  ;  it  knows  the  way  to  it.  It  has  learnt 
the  patient  process  of  accumulating  facts,  of  draw- 
ing just  inferences  from  facts,  of  making  an  ex- 
act record  of  facts,  of  grouping  them,  and  at  last 
arriving  at  a  generalization  or  a  law.  That  is  the 
great  scientific  discovery  of  the  modern  world. 
And  the  Puritan  College  had  learnt  that  great 
lesson  —  the  way  to  truth,  and  like  that  Swiss 
boy,  it  had  to  say,  "  I  do  not  know  where  the 
truth  is;  I  never  was  there."  And  it  could  add, 
' '  I  shall  never  get  there,  but  I  know  the  way  to 
truth." 

It  was  in  this  way  that  the  Puritan  College 
was  still  prepared  to  serve  the  Puritan  Church. 
It  was  prepared  to  be  absolutely  tolerant  and 
free  ;  it  was  prepared  to  apply  to  religious  and 
theological  truth,  to  the  discovery  of  it,  the  same 
method  that  it  used  in  the  discovery  of  other 
kinds  of  truth, — bit  by  bit,  a  step  at  a  time, 
always  advancing  toward  the  truth,  never  arriv- 
ing at  it,  and  never  expecting  to  arrive  at  the 
whole  of  it ;   looking  forward  with  delight  to  the 


[85] 

perpetual  search,  the  joy  of  its  soul  lying  in  the 
search. 

I  one  day  received  a  visit  from  an  old  Congre- 
gational minister,  who  wished  to  ask  me  how 
the  intellectual  development  of  a  young  man  in 
his  employ  could  be  furthered,  could  be  carried 
on  beyond  the  stage  which  he  had  already  reached ; 
and  the  old  man  described  to  me  the  history  of 
this  youth, — what  he  had  learnt,  and  what  he 
had  not  learnt,  and  asked  me  how  that  youth 
could  be  furthered  toward  the  ministry  to  which 
he  aspired.  I  gave  such  advice  as  I  could,  but 
lost  sight  of  the  old  minister,  and  had  never  seen 
the  youth.  A  few  years  afterward  I  received 
another  call  from  the  same  old  minister,  who 
told  me  that  George  Gordon  had  been  through 
the  Bangor  Theological  Seminary,  and  that  in  that 
seminary  it  was  not  necessary  to  know  any  Greek, 
and  indeed  that  the  course  of  instruction,  though 
sincere  and  pious,  was  from  the  scholarly  point 
of  view  inadequate  for  an  ambitious  minister, 
ambitious  to  know,  ambitious  to  be  able  to  teach. 
Had  the  Puritan  College  anything  it  could  offer 
to  a  young  man  whose  career  was  such  as  he 
described  ?  And  a  little  later  the  young  man  him- 
self came  to  see  me,  and  we  discussed  together 
what  the  Puritan  College  had  to  offer  to  this 
aspirant  to  the  service  of  the  Puritan  Church. 

Now,  in  two  hundred  and  fifty  years  the  Puri- 
tan College  had  become  wider  and  more  liberal 


[86] 

in  its  policies,  and  had  greatly  increased  the  range 
of  its  instruction,  and  had  opened  this  great  range 
more  freely  to  ambitious  youth.  And  so  the 
Puritan  College  was  able  to  accept  this  young 
man  as  a  special  student,  although  not  as  a  regu- 
lar student,  because  he  could  not  have  passed  the 
examinations  for  admission  to  the  Puritan  Col- 
lege as  a  regular  student,  in  spite  of  the  fact 
that  he  had  been  through  the  Bangor  Theological 
Seminary. 

A  couple  of  years  passed,  and  I  was  astounded 
one  day  in  the  meeting  of  the  College  Faculty 
to  have  Professor  Goodwin,  Professor  of  Greek, 
indeed  the  Eliot  Professor  of  Greek  Literature, 
make  a  motion  in  the  Faculty,  the  like  of  which 
I  had  never  heard.  Professor  Goodwin  had  great 
distrust  of  special  students ;  he  did  not  like  them, 
and  he  thought  there  should  be  no  such  students 
in  Harvard  College ;  yet  his  motion  was  this : 
1 '  I  move  that  George  Gordon  be  admitted  to  the 
Senior  Class  without  examination.  It  is  an  out- 
rage that  such  a  student  should  be  registered  in 
Harvard  College  as  a  special  student.  He  has 
received  ioo  per  cent,  in  my  most  difficult  course 
in  Greek,  —  the  course  in  Aristotle."  The  mo- 
tion took  the  Faculty  by  surprise,  but  they  unani- 
mously adopted  the  motion  of  Professor  Goodwin, 
and  thereupon  the  Puritan  College  rendered  a  new 
and  very  lasting  service  to  the  Puritan  Church. 

It  was  not  long  after  that,  on  the  most  beautiful 


[§7] 
evening  that  I  remember  ever  to  have  seen,  that 
Mr.  Alpheus  Hardy  and  I  were  watching  from 
the  deck  of  a  steamer  the  entire  western  sky  suf- 
fused with  most  brilliant  reds  and  yellows.  We 
were  silent  in  the  face  of  this  gorgeous  spectacle. 
But  at  last  it  faded  away,  and  then  Mr.  Hardy 
told  me  that  the  Old  South  Church  should  shortly 
elect  a  new  minister  :  did  I  know  anybody  that 
was  suitable  for  that  church?  I  said  I  did,  a 
young  man  named  George  Gordon,  and  that  he 
was  then  preaching  in  Greenwich,  Connecticut. 
I  advised  that  a  committee  of  the  Old  South 
Church  visit  Greenwich  and  hear  Mr.  Gordon 
preach.  That  was  the  simple  suggestion  which 
I  offered  to  Mr.  Hardy.  However,  the  Puritan 
College  then  rendered  another  service  of  a  very 
lasting  quality  to  the  Puritan  Church. 

Years  went  by  before  the  Old  South  Church 
could  induce  Mr.  Gordon  to  accept  its  call,  and 
during  that  period  of  doubt  and  hesitation  I  had 
repeated  interviews  with  Mr.  Hardy  and  with  Mr. 
Gordon,  and  I  trust  that  in  those  interviews  I 
furthered  the  interests  of  the  Puritan  Church. 

Now  what  did  the  Puritan  College  do  for  this 
young  Scotchman,  son  of  a  farmer,  ambitious, 
open-minded,  keen  in  the  pursuit  of  knowledge, 
full  of  natural  piety  ?  If  we  can  answer  that 
question  we  shall  learn  again  what  the  Puritan 
College  has  been  able  to  do  for  the  Puritan 
Church. 


[88] 

In  the  first  place,  it  gave  this  young  man  an 
acquaintance  with  what  great  men  have  thought, 
and  done,  and  hoped  for,  and  aspired  to  through 
long  ages.  It  is  a  great  thing  for  a  church  that  its 
minister  knows  as  a  scholar  the  ' '  stream  of  the 
world,"  as  Goethe  called  it.  It  is  a  great  thing 
for  a  church  that  its  minister  has  learnt  by  study, 
by  intercourse  with  great  minds,  by  filling  his 
own  mind  with  the  story  of  great  epochs,  how 
infinitely  precious  a  thing  is  freedom  of  thought, 
what  noble  elements  in  human  character  are  can- 
dor, sincerity,  and  the  eager,  earnest  love  of  truth. 
Those  things  the  Puritan  College  was  able  to  set 
before  the  young  Gordon. 

And  then  the  Puritan  College,  true  to  the 
spirit  of  its  founders,  was  able  to  develop 
a  natural  feeling  of  this  youth,  his  sympathy 
with  democracy.  I  suppose  this  congregation  is 
aware  that  Dr.  Gordon  knows  by  heart  the  poet 
Burns.  Therein  —  in  that  poetry  is  expressed 
the  perfect  spirit  of  democracy.  And  that 
quality  in  your  minister  has  been  of  infinite 
worth  to  this  church,  and  to  the  community  in 
which  this  church  is  set.  That  is  a  great  quality 
of  the  Puritan  College,  never  truer  than  to-day 
to  this  love  of  humanity,  this  belief  in  humanity, 
this  hope  for  humanity.  Indeed,  the  Puritan 
College  has  greatly  served  the  Puritan  Church 
through  this  man. 

And  now  let  us  think  for  a  moment  of  the 


t§9] 

reward  which  your  pastor  has  earned  and  now 
enjoys,  the  reward  for  all  his  labors  and  trials, 
and  for  all  his  varied  efforts  to  serve  this  people 
and  this  city.  He  has  the  greatest  reward  any 
teacher  can  have.  A  teacher  he  has  been. 
What  is  that  reward?  The  making  of  disciples. 
They  may  be  few,  they  may  be  many  ;  the  influ- 
ential disciples  may  be  few,  but  few  are  enough  to 
constitute  a  great  reward.  Disciples  —  men  who 
carry  forward  the  work  of  the  teacher,  and  better 
it  as  time  goes  on  ;  the  more  it  is  bettered,  the 
greater  the  reward.  This  body  of  disciples, 
formed  here,  is  by  no  means  confined  to  the  min- 
istry of  the  Congregational  churches,  or  of  all 
the  churches  put  together.  Dr.  Gordon  has  dis- 
ciples among  business  men,  professional  men,  and 
I  am  inclined  to  believe  that  these  disciples  can  do 
more  to  advance  and  perpetuate  his  work  than 
the  ministers  can,  much  as  they  can  do.  The 
best  teaching  of  this  age  is  done  through  the 
practice  of  the  men  who  conduct  great  industries 
humanely ;  through  the  practice  of  the  men  who 
organize  honest  and  efficient  governments, 
national,  state,  municipal.  It  is  done,  in  short, 
by  the  men  who  are  at  work  out  in  the  world 
to  better  human  conditions,  to  bring  society  for- 
ward towards  democratic  ideals,  to  advance  the 
human  race  towards  greater  happiness  and  a 
better  life.  Many  such  disciples  Dr.  Gordon 
has  made,  possesses,  and  enjoys  ;  and  through 


[90] 
them  all  his  work  will  go  forward  in  this  com- 
munity, and  in  this  nation  ;   and  it  will  go  for- 
ward without  limit  of  time.       The  Puritan  Church 
through    him    will   continue   to   exercise  a  wide 
and  precious  influence  in  the  American  commu- 
nity.    He  has  been  a  great  servant 
of  the  Puritan  Church  :    he 
has  been  a  great  mas- 
ter  for   many 
disciples. 


INFORMAL   RECEPTION 

FOLLOWING  the  singing  of  Dr.  Cross'  hymn, 
written  especially  for  the  occasion,  ' '  Strong  tower  of 
truth  against  the  sky,"  and  the  benediction  by  the 
Reverend  John  Hopkins  Denison,  minister  of  the  Cen- 
tral Church,  an  informal  reception  of  the  guests,  by 
Dr.  and  Mrs.  Gordon,  was  held  in  the  chapel. 


Burner  gtoen  bj>  tfje  ©lb  feoutfj  Club 
at  Hotel  Somerset 

Cfjc  Jf  tftecnttj  of  gpril,  Nineteen 

^unbred  and  ilme 


HOSPITALITY 


MR.  FRANK  W.  NO  YES,  THE  PRESIDENT  OF  THE  OLD  SOUTH 
CLUB,  RESPONDED  TO  THE  TOAST,  "  HOSPITALITY  " 


MR.    NOYES'    RESPONSE 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen  : 

IT  is  the  high  privilege  of  this  Club  to-night  to 
provide  the  occasion  for  speaking  words  of 
appreciation  of  the  great  work  done  by  the 
minister  of  the  Old  South  Church.  It  is  very 
appropriate  that  to  the  Old  South  Club  should 
be  left  this  duty,  this  privilege,  because  the  mis- 
sion of  the  pastor  of  this  church  has  been  to 
inspire,  enlighten,  and  guide  young  men.  They 
have  looked  for  a  man  who  should  stand  erect 
and  be  a  man  !  —  foursquare  to  every  wind  that 
blows ;  and  they  have  found  such  a  man  in  this 
pulpit.  The  young  men  of  this  church  and  com- 
munity have  found  in  Dr.  Gordon  their  guide 
and  their  inspiration. 

It  is  not  my  function  to  dwell  at  length  upon 
our  pastor's  service  or  character;  but  only  to 
extend  a  welcome,  and  introduce  the  Toastmaster 
of  the  evening,  the  Honorable,  and  honored,  John 
W.  Hammond,  Justice  of  our  Supreme  Judicial 
Court,  who  will  preside. 


LAW    AND    GOSPEL 


HON.   JOHN  W.   HAMMOND,  JUSTICE  OF  THE  SUPREME  COURT 

OF  MASSACHUSETTS,    RESPONDED  TO  THE    TOAST, 

' '  LAW    AND    GOSPEL  " 


MR.    JUSTICE   HAMMONDS 
RESPONSE 

Ladies  and  Gentlemen: 

I  DEFY  anybody  to  go  into  Dr.  Gordon's 
church  and  sit  down  and  not  listen  to  him. 
He  compels  attention.  There  is  no  chance 
to  get  asleep.  His  preaching  is  very  effective  in 
that  way.  But  back  of  it  all,  gentlemen,  we  all 
know  that  way  down  under  all  and  back  of  all 
lies  the  man  of  integrity  and  of  Christian  faith  ! 
Such  a  man  may  not  agree  with  everybody's 
views;  but  whether  he  agrees  or  not,  the  view 
which  he  has  is  the  one  which  he  expresses. 

There  are  a  great  many  people  in  this  world 
that  never  know  what  people  think  of  them.  I 
know  many  a  man  who  thinks  he  is  the  pink  of 
virtue  and  truth,  whose  reputation  for  truth  and 
veracity  is  not  good;  but  there  comes  a  time 
when  a  man  finds  out  what  people  think  of  him. 
He  may  be  working  slowly  as  the  coral  reefs  are 
growing,  thinking  only  of  the  simple  work  he  is 
doing,  and  trying  to  do  it  as  best  he  can  ;  if  a 
business  man,  clerking  in  a  store,  some  day  the 
employer  comes  round  and  promotes  him  — 
sometimes  to  his  surprise;   but  that  is   the  test 


[  I02l 

by  which  the  young  man  knows  that  he  is  sat- 
isfactory  to   his   employer.      Sometimes  it   is   a 
prominent  and  useful  position  in  public  life  that 
is  vacant  and  a  man  is  promoted  to  it ;   sometimes 
the  appointment  is  unsolicited ;    then  he  knows 
whether  he  has  been  regarded  as  faithful  in  the 
things  which  he  has  done.      Sometimes,  at  the 
end  of  twenty-five  years,  comes  such  a  tremen- 
dous  outburst   of  enthusiasm  and  exhibition  of 
love   as   you  have   seen   this   week  towards   our 
Pastor.     These  are  not  words  —  these  are  deeds! 
and  they  indicate  to  him,   better  than  anything 
else  can,  the  good  results  of  his  ministry.     This 
celebration,    I    believe,    will    lead    Dr.    Gordon 
to    go  on    all   the  farther  and    better. 
He  has  reached  the   twenty- 
fifth  post :   may  he  live 
to   reach   the 
fiftieth ! 


CHRISTIAN   AMITY,    A  MESSAGE 
FROM   SISTER   CHURCHES 


MR.  JUSTICE  HAMMOND  INTRODUCED  THE  REVEREND  JAMES 
DE  NORMANDIE,  D.D.,  AS  FOLLOWS  :  IT  IS  MY  DUTY  TO 
INTRODUCE  TO  YOU  A  GENTLEMAN  WHOM  YOU  ALL  KNOW 
TO  BE  A  BROAD-MINDED,  CHRISTIAN  MAN,  AND  IT  IS  MY 
PLEASURE  TO  INTRODUCE  TO  YOU  REV.  DR.  DE  NOR- 
MANDIE, WHO  WILL  SPEAK  ON  "  CHRISTIAN  AMITY,  A 
MESSAGE    FROM    SISTER    CHURCHES" 


DR.  DE  NORMANDIES  RESPONSE 

Mr.   President,  Members  of  this  Ancient  Historic   Church,  Invited 
Guests,  Ladies,  and  Doctor  Gordon  : 

IT  is  rather  a  weighty  responsibility  you  have 
placed  upon  me  to  speak  for  all  the  churches 
of  Boston.  If  it  were  a  matter  of  theology 
purely,  of  the  declaration  of  those  things  which 
are  surely  believed  among  us,  it  might  be  that 
not  every  one  would  quite  agree  with  my  views. 
But  it  is  not  a  question  of  theology,  but  of  re- 
ligion ;  of  the  warm,  frank,  earnest  feeling  that 
we  have  toward  this  preacher  of  righteousness, 
this  preacher  of  a  pure  and  undenled  religion, 
the  preacher  of  a  broad  religion  which  underlies 
and  overtops  all  narrow  or  outgrown  doctrines ; 
for  it  is  theology  which  separates  us,  and  religion 
which  binds  us  together.  It  is  theology  which 
makes  the  divisions  and  discords  ;  it  is  religion 
which  brings  harmony  and  peace.  And  I  am 
quite  confident  that  in  these  words  to  this  preacher 
I  bring  the  sincere  welcome  of  every  church  in 
Boston,  of  every  church  in  Massachusetts,  of 
every  church  in  New  England,  of  every  church  in 
this  country  or  beyond  the  seas  which  has  kept  in 
touch  with  his  teachings  for  twenty-five  years. 


[io6] 

In  our  settlement  over  two  of  the  oldest  and 
most  distinguished  churches  in  this  country,  Dr. 
Gordon  and  myself  are  but  a  few  months  apart. 
He  had,  as  I  recall,  a  little  more  difficult  time  in 
passing  the  ordeal  of  his  settlement  than  I  had  ; 
but  those  differences  are  soon  forgotten  in  these 
days.  He  has  referred  recently,  with  a  good  deal 
of  emphasis,  to  some  of  the  difficulties  and  trials 
he  had  in  the  early  years  of  his  pastorate,  and 
that  they  were  good  for  him.  I  am  quite  sure  it 
is  always  a  good  thing  for  a  young  man  to  have 
something  to  struggle  against,  some  opposition 
to  try  his  metal. 

Dr.  Gordon  during  these  twenty-five  years 
has  been  leading  us  from  doctrines  pent  up  and 
too  close  for  the  advancing  study  and  truth  of 
man,  on  and  on  to  the  boundless  ocean  of  diviner 
truth !  Now  perhaps  he  never  could  have  done 
this  so  well  and  so  wisely  if  he  had  not  been 
nurtured  in  the  awful  strictness  of  the  Scotch 
kirk,  and  yet  never  since  Burns,  in  his  "Holy 
Willie's  Prayer,"  so  fiercely  attacked  and  almost 
demolished  the  rigid  Calvinism  of  his  day  has  it 
had  a  more  powerful  exposure  than  in  Dr.  Gor- 
don's article  on  the  ' '  Collapse  of  the  New 
England  Theology,"  published  in  the  Harvard 
Theological    Review. 

The  story  is  told  of  an  eminent  Scotch 
preacher  who  asked  one  of  his  kirk  what  he 
thought  about  the  minister  with  whom  he  had 


[  I07] 
just  exchanged.      "I  did  not  like  him,"  said  the 
clerk ;    "  I  do  not  like  these  ministers  who  keep 
holding  up  to  us  the  Ten  Commandments  and 
telling  us  to  obey  them :  there  are  too  many  of 
them  —  I  never  could  keep  more  than   the  first 
half  of  them!  "     But  he  continued,    "What  I 
like  best  in  preaching  is  that  kind  which  jumbles 
the  judgment    and    confounds    the    senses,    and 
for  the  like  of  that,  Doctor,  I  never   heard  any 
preaching  equal  to  yours  !"     There  have  been  a 
great  many  persons  who  have  come  to  like  that 
kind  of  preaching,  for  it  is  rather  the  mark  of  a 
distinguished    theologian.       They    think    he    is 
sound ;   sometimes   it  proves  to  be  unsound,  — 
but  you  have  nothing  of  that  in  your  preacher, 
and  when  you  add  to  the  strength  of  his  philo- 
sophical statement  a  great  clearness  and  simplic- 
ity  in    practical  bearing,  a  broad    humanity,    a 
deep  sympathy  and  touch  of  pathos,  and  poetry 
the  sentiment  of  religion,  —  you  have 
found  the  secret  of  the  ministry 
which    is    irresistible,   per- 
vasive,   enduring, 
uplifting. 


LITERATURE   AND   RELIGION 


MR.    BLISS    PERRY,     EDITOR    OF     THE     ATLANTIC    MONTHLY, 

RESPONDED    TO    THE    TOAST,     "LITERATURE    AND 

RELIGION  " 


MR.    PERRY'S   RESPONSE 

Mr.  Toastmaster,  Gentlemen,  Friends  of  Doctor  Gordon: 

I  HAVE  been  asked  to  say  a  word  about  ' '  Re- 
ligion and  Literature."  A  light  and  passing 
ten-minute  topic ! 
We  are  accustomed  to  say  of  religion  that  it  is 
• '  the  life  of  God  in  the  soul  of  man. "  Literature 
is  the  life  and  soul  of  man  expressed  in  words. 
Words  are  poor  things.  One  never  realizes 
more  their  poverty  than  when  he  tries  to  place 
them  at  the  service  of  friendship.  And  yet 
words  are  wonderful  things,  because  they  are 
colored  with  the  thoughts,  the  experiences,  the 
dreams  and  desires  of  men.  We  have  outgrown 
that  old  distinction  between  sacred  and  profane 
literature,  sacred  and  profane  history.  We  have 
learned  that  there  is  not  and  that  there  are  not 
two  laws  for  the  progress  of  the  world.  There 
is  but  one  law ;  and  yet  if  it  is  ever  right  to  use 
that  word  sacred  for  anything  save  the  living  soul, 
we  have  a  right  to  apply  it  to  those  books 
wherein  men  have  written  the  record  of  their 
search  after  God. 

This  sacred  literature  was  long,  as  you  know, 
the  chief  study  of  the  educated  clergy  of  New 


[»»] 

England.  From  the  beginning  the  wisest  of 
them  have  always  maintained  that  new  light  is 
still  to  break  forth  from  the  word  of  God. 
Their  theories  of  inspiration  have  changed  with 
their  theology,  with  the  development  of  historical 
criticism,  with  a  wider  knowledge  of  the  litera- 
tures of  the  world.  But  they  have  always  held 
steadily  to  the  fact  of  inspiration  —  that  it  is  life, 
and  life  only,  that  can  kindle  life.  Trained  by 
this  contact  with  the  noblest  literature,  they  have 
also  searched  the  records  of  the  human  heart. 
They  have  sometimes  made  of  its  dark  secrets  a 
too  painful  analysis,  a  too  morbid  Christianity ; 
they  have  declared  with  Browning's  hero,  that 
' '  priests  should  study  passion  ;  how  else  cure 
mankind  .  .  .  who  come  for  help  in  passionate 
extremes?"  They  have  searched  the  memorials 
of  human  society,  and  they  have  found  in  Baby- 
lonian clay,  Egyptian  papyrus,  and  Greek  and 
Roman  parchment  and  marble  corroborative 
testimony  to  the  will  of  God  seen  in  history 
and  literature.  Our  clergymen  of  New  England 
have  chiefly  served  their  generation  by  preaching. 
It  is  a  preacher  whom  we  honor  to-night,  a 
master  of  assemblies.  I  know  and  you  know 
that  Dr.  Gordon  has  written  many  books  ;  they 
are  masculine,  progressive,  reverent  discussions 
of  the  greatest  themes  ;  they  touch  on  the  larger 
problems  of  philosophy,  history,  and  poetry ; 
they    are    beautiful   in    workmanship,    they    are 


[ii3] 

magnetic,  helpful,  human ;  you  will  find  a  good 
deal  of  George  Gordon  in  them  when  you  read 
them  ;  you  will  hear  again,  back  of  the  phrases, 
that  rich,  friendly  voice ;  you  will  see  rising 
before  you  again  that  noble,   bodily  presence! 

His  chief  tool  in  these  twenty-five  years  of  ser- 
vice to  our  community  has  been  the  spoken  word. 
It  has  been  his  task  to  bring  home  to  the  individ- 
ual conscience  the  truth  as  he  saw  it  with  all  the 
magnificent  resources  of  the  living  man.  You, 
who  have  had  the  happiness  of  listening  often  to 
him,  will  not  be  likely  to  underestimate  that  power 
of  the  spoken  word.  Men  of  letters  very  often 
forget  it,  and  yet  the  audible  word  still  conveys 
to  millions  of  our  fellow-men  all  that  they  ever 
know  of  literature.  He  "who  spake  as  never 
man  spake,"  with  flashing  imagery  and  tender 
beauty,  with  poetry  and  satire  and  hyperbole  un- 
rivaled, never  —  so  far  as  we  know  —  wrote  a 
line.  And  to-day  the  ministers,  who,  following 
their  Master's  example,  are  content  to  preach  the 
good  tidings  of  the  kingdom  of  God,  find  that  the 
common  people,  who  are  no  mean  judges  of  lit- 
erature, always  hear  them  gladly.  We  laymen 
sometimes  confess  our  dislike  of  popular  preach- 
ing. What  we  dislike,  I  take  it,  is  listening  to 
cheap  sociology,  amateur  political  economy,  frock- 
coated  melodrama  in  the  pulpit. 

That  Dr.  Gordon  has  held  this  great  and  in- 
creasing audience  for  twenty-five  years  is  a  testi- 


[»4] 

mony,  not  only  to  the  earnestness,  the  power,  and 
devoutness  of  his  utterance  ;  it  is  also  an  evidence 
of  the  literary  excellence  of  that  utterance.  They 
have  been  years  of  labor,  incessant,  wearying. 
He  has  a  right  to  reply  as  did  John  Wesley  when 
a  woman  came  —  as  she  said — with  a  message 
from  the  Lord,  that  he  was  laying  up  treasures 
on  earth,  taking  his  ease  and  minding  only  his 
eating  and  drinking.  "I  told  her,"  says  Wesley, 
in  his  diary,  "  I  told  her  that  God  knew  me  bet- 
ter, and  that  if  he  had  sent  her  he  would  have 
sent  her  with  a  more  proper  message!  " 

Now,  gentlemen,  when  this  preaching  of  the 
living  word  is  ripened  with  knowledge,  and  en- 
riched by  many-sided  contact  with  affairs,  and 
mellowed  with  compassion  for  humanity,  it  pos- 
sesses the  qualities  which  give  literature  its  per- 
manence. Literature  is  an  expression  of  the 
whole  life  of  man  ;  and  religion  is  an  integral 
part  of  our  human  experience.  The  writers  who 
affect  to  ignore  it,  as  so  many  writers  appear  to 
ignore  it  nowadays,  are  trying  to  play  upon  a 
harp  with  muted  strings.  If  you  say,  as  George 
Eliot  did  once,  that  God  is  inconceivable,  immor- 
tality unbelievable,  whatever  else  you  are  doing 
you  are  just  so  far  sentencing  literature  to  silence, 
because  it  is  precisely  on  the  topics  of  God  and 
immortality  that  literature  has  thus  far  spoken 
with  her  noblest  voice.  Dr.  George  Gordon  has 
long  listened  to  those  voices.      His  own  literary 


[i.5] 

style,  so  clean  cut,  so  athletic,  so  rich  with  humor 

and  pathos,  has  been  formed  by  reverent  intimacy 

with  the  masters  of  thought  and  verse.     We  love 

to  see  him  turn  to  Plato  and  St.  Paul,  to  Burns 

and  Browning,  with  the   happy  freedom  of  old 

companionship ;   he  quotes   like   a  gentleman  — 

knowing  that  he  will  be  quoted  also  !      He  has  a 

mind  that  is  nourished  on  great  thoughts,  a  soul 

fed  by  deep  emotions.     He  has  proved  once  more 

the  truth  of  that  gay-hearted    old    riddle 

of  long  ago,  ' '  Out  of  the  eater  comes 

forth  meat,   and  out  of  the 

strong    comes    forth 

sweetness." 


THEOLOGY   AND    ETHICS 


PROFESSOR   GEORGE    H.    PALMER,    OF    HARVARD    UNIVERSITY, 
RESPONDED  TO   THE  TOAST,   "  THEOLOGY  AND  ETHICS  " 


PROFESSOR  PALMERS  RESPONSE 


Mr.  Toastmaster,  Members  and  Guests  of  the  Old  South  Club: 


indeed  different  from  that  which  is  assigned 


me :   it  is  the  same  thing  —  for  it  is  "  The 
Reverend  George  A.  Gordon  !  " 

I  wanted  to  talk  about  him  to-night,  and  to 
talk  about  a  special  view  of  him ;  for  you  people 
of  this  Old  South  Church  naturally  enough  imag- 
ine you  own  this  man  —  but  you  do  not.  It  is 
one  of  the  glorious  peculiarities  of  a  great  man 
that  he  cannot  be  possessed  by  any  single  com- 
pany, by  any  single  institution  :  he  belongs  to 
his  community;  he  belongs  to  all  thoughtful  and 
earnest  men.  We  should  not  feel  that  this  occa- 
sion was  properly  organized  were  it  not  possible 
for  some  representative  of  Harvard  to  appear  here 
and  say  that  our  great  University  is  as  truly  the 
debtor  to  your  minister  as  are  you,  yourselves. 
And,  indeed,  when  I  come  to  ask  myself  why  it 
is  that  you  feel  so  deeply  indebted  to  him,  I  see 
that  it  is  precisely  for  those  reasons  that  we  also 
are.  Analyze  in  your  own  minds  what  are  his 
fundamental   characteristics  which  have    so    en- 


[  I2°] 

deared  him  to  you.  Are  they  not  these?  You 
think  of  him  as  a  scholar  ;  you  think  of  him  as 
a  preacher  ;  you  think  of  him  as  a  master  of 
men. 

I  remember  just  thirty  years  ago  this  year 
when  he  first  appeared  in  the  College  yard  :  a 
hostile  person  he  was  at  that  time  !  He  had  been 
reading  the  papers,  and  from  them  he  had  learned 
that  Harvard  University  was  a  home  of  atheism  ; 
it  was  a  place  where  noble  and  earnest  characters 
were  broken  down ;  unhappily,  also,  it  was  the 
only  place  in  the  country  where  the  young  man 
could  devote  himself  to  Greek  and  to  philosophy 
without  taking  other  studies.  The  two  things 
that  he  wanted  to  know  then  were  the  two  things 
that  he  has  wanted  to  know  ever  since  and  on 
which  he  has  nourished  himself — Greek  litera- 
ture and  philosophy.  He  was  obliged  therefore 
to  come  to  this  dangerous  spot  of  Harvard,  and 
he  had  not  been  there  six  months  before  he  and 
his  sponsor  became  among  the  most  ardent  devo- 
tees and  apostles  of  Harvard ! 

The  traits  which  have  been  dominant  in  him 
throughout  his  life  with  you  here  manifested 
themselves  with  us.  He  has  been  a  scholar  in 
the  ministry  —  and  how  rare  they  are  !  how  mis- 
takenly rare !  how  eager  the  public  is  for  instruc- 
tion !  Those  ministers  who  will  think  clearly 
and  speak  straight  —  what  a  profound  influence 
they  have !     And  yet,  how  few  seek  this  noble 


[HI] 

office !  Early  in  life  he  understood  the  impor- 
tance of  this,  and  when  he  left  Harvard  for  his 
little  parish  in  Connecticut,  he  went  there  as  a 
student,  and  those  of  you  who  are  familiar  with 
his  early  call  to  this  great  church  know  how  he 
hesitated  for  a  year  because  he  feared  that,  coming 
to  Boston,  these  scholarly  aims  would  be  set  aside 
in  practical  work.  But  he  has  known  how  to 
reconcile  those  two,  and  thus  he  has  gone  on  to 
a  second  great  characteristic,  which  has  marked 
him  here. 

He  has  been  a  great  preacher  ;  and  preaching 
he  has  conceived  in  its  noblest  terms,  as  that 
which  must  be  thought  out  with  elaborate  care 
—  yes,  with  anxiety  and  toil  by  the  minister 
himself.  And  then  he  has  adopted  the  view  of 
preaching  which  Martin eau  so  admirably  set 
forth  :  that  the  sermon  must  be  a  lyric  which 
has  a  touch  of  poetry,  which  has  an  imaginative 
appeal  to  the  feelings  and  the  will  of  those  who 
hear,  but  resting  on  a  solid  intellectual  founda- 
tion. Surely  no  one  has  sat  in  that  great  church 
and  listened  to  those  sublime  appeals  without 
being  swept  away  from  himself — swept  away 
up  into  the  very  presence  of  God  by  those  great 
lyrics  ! 

Only  five  years  after  Dr.  Gordon  took  his 
Bachelor's  degree  at  Harvard  he  was  called  into 
a  very  venturesome  service  there.  We  then  de- 
cided to  sweep   away  all  authoritative  religion; 


t I22  ] 

to  make  religion  an  opportunity ;  to  give  it  as  a 
privilege  to  our  students,  where  before  it  had 
been  something  enforced.  And,  accordingly,  we 
desired  to  have  every  aspect  of  the  religious  life 
represented  in  those  who  should  make  this  ap- 
peal. Our  Board  of  five  preachers  was  consti- 
tuted, and  with  Phillips  Brooks  engaged  cordially 
in  the  same  work;  and  into  that  Board  Dr. 
Gordon  came,  only  five  years  out  of  college. 
What  a  venturesome  service  it  was,  and  how 
nobly  has  it  been  performed.  For  five  years  he 
stayed  on  that  Board,  at  great  personal  sacrifice 
to  himself.  Then,  finding  other  things  urgent, 
he  laid  it  aside  for  a  brief  time ;  he  has  returned 
to  us  again,  and  this  is  now  his  third  year  of  ser- 
vice  with  us.  You  can  imagine  the  depth  of  his 
influence  there. 

I  wonder  how  many  of  you  have  seen  an  ad- 
mirable little  book,  by  Professor  Peabody,  on 
"Mornings  in  the  College  Chapel,"  which  he, 
with  great  justice,  dedicated  to  your  pastor. 
Thinking  not  all  of  you  would  have  seen  his 
friendly  words,  I  copied  them  off  and  thought 
to  bring  them  to  you.      He  writes  : 

Twenty  years  ago  we  were  set  to  keep  the  light ; 
Five  of  as  shared  the  watch   through  the  first  long 

winter's  night : 
One,  oar  captain,  sank  in  duty  s  pitiless  foam, 
Two,  our  veterans,  wait  by  the  shore  for  their  summons 

home. 


[n.3] 

The  years  and  the  faces  pass,   and  the  keepers  come 

and  go 
Like  the  sea  of  life  beneath   them,  with  its  ceaseless 

ebb  and  flow. 
Still  at  your  post  yoa  stand,  high  up  in  the  light-house 

tower, 
Guarding  the  way  of  life,  speaking  the  word  of  power  ; 
Resolute,  tender,  wise,  free  in  the  love  of  the  truth. 
Tending  the  flame  of  the  Christ,  as  it  marks  the  chan- 
nel of  youth. 
And  the  task  we  were  set,  my  brother,  has  it  failed  in 

these  twenty  years, 
Has  the  light  gone  out  in  the  night  of  doubt,  or  the 

smothering  fog  of  fears? 
Thank  God,  in  the  shifting  tides  of  life  the  tower  of 

prayer  still  stands, 
And  in  His  name  the  undimmed  flame  is  fed  by  loyal 

hands. 
What  shall  we  pledge  to  the  College  which  trusted  us 

so,  my  friend, 
But  a  loving  prayer,  and  a  constant  care  to  serve  her 

till  the  end? 

That  is  the  spirit  that  your  pastor  has  brought  to 
us.  You  think  of  him  as  quickening  you;  he 
has  quickened  class  after  class  of  the  young  men 
who  are  going  out  to  lead  this  country. 

Yes,  but  his  power,  neither  with  you  nor  with 
us,  has  been  confined  to  these  two  functions. 
He  is  a  master  of  men.  He  has  raised  your 
church  into  something  like  the  Puritan  cathedral. 
We    Gongregationalists    abolished    bishops   long 


[124] 

ago,  it  is  said.  I  think  rather  we  abolished  the 
mode  of  choosing  them  ;  we  have  them  chosen 
by  natural  selection,  and  Dr.  Gordon  has  risen 
to  be  almost  a  bishop  of  our  body.  When  any 
of  us  are  in  perplexity,  we  turn  to  him,  —  he 
guides.  He  steered  us  through  much  of  the 
Andover  trouble.  He  has  been  a  beacon  light 
for  many  in  steering  their  way  through  these 
perplexing  shoals  of  modern  theology.  Yes,  and 
in  practical  questions  no  less.  Well,  long  ago 
we  too,  at  Harvard,  discerned  these  powers  in 
him,  and  therefore  for  twelve  years  he  has  served 
us  as  one  of  the  governors  of  the  College.  We 
have  a  Board  of  Overseers — thirty  men — picked 
men  out  of  all  our  Alumni ;  they  must  be  men 
of  such  eminence,  men  so  noted  for  practical 
sagacity  that  the  great  body  of  our  graduates  will 
select  them  out  of  all  whom  they  might  choose. 
And  for  twelve  years  Dr.  Gordon  has  been  on 
that  Board  —  twelve  years  of  great  consequence 
in  the  life  of  the  University,  It  was  easy  to  sus- 
pect the  policies  that  our  great  leader,  President 
Eliot,  has  introduced;  it  was  easy  to  get  up  a 
reaction  against  them ;  it  was  a  matter  of  vast 
consequence  to  the  future  that  they  should  be 
preserved.  While  Dr.  Gordon  has  been  an  ad- 
mirable critic  of  those  measures,  he  has  stood 
firmly  by  all  that  made  for  the  strength  of  the 
University  in  those  things. 

Such,  then,  are  the  three  functions  in  which 


[125] 

both  you  and  we  have  marked  him  as  preeminent, 
and  yet  I  suppose  in  the  very  fact  of  my  calling 
attention  to  these  I   show  how  small  they  are. 
Great  as  he  is,  he  is  a  tender  and  lovable  human 
being ;   we  go  to  him  for  sympathy  in  small  mat- 
ters ;   we  honor  him,  we  admire  him  in  our  secret 
hearts ;   we  are  glad  when  he  bows  to  us  from 
across     the    way;    when    we     come    into     his 
presence    we     feel    raised    into     some     higher 
sphere.      You  and  we    have  known 
these    things    for    years:    I 
hope    he    is    find- 


ing   them 


out. 


PEW    TO   PULPIT 


MR.    JOHN    WELLS    MORSS    RESPONDED    TO    THE    TOAST, 

"PEW  to  pulpit" 


MR.   MORSS'  RESPONSE 

Mr.  Toastmaster,  Doctor  Gordon,  and  Friends  : 

I  SHOULD  like  to  dwell  on  the  benefit  which 
the  Old  South  people  have  received  from  the 
preaching  of  Dr.  Gordon.  I  should  like 
persuasively  to  explain  how  I  and  others  have 
grown  in  grace  under  such  preaching.  But  for 
all  this  time  is  lacking.  I  had  thought  to  re- 
mind you  of  some  of  the  reasons  for  the  admi- 
ration and  regard  which  we  in  the  pews  have  for 
our  minister.  But  here  the  time  limitation  is 
less  severe  than  I  first  thought.  Those  who  have 
preceded  me  have  covered  much  of  the  ground 
and  you  will  yourselves  think  of  many  reasons 
which  need  not,  and  others  which  cannot,  be 
enumerated. 

I  would,  however,  rejoice  with  you  for  a  mo- 
ment over  some  of  the  qualities  which  endear 
the  guest  of  the  evening  to  us  whom  he  most 
directly  serves  —  qualities  which  would  have 
made  us  love  him  in  the  pew  had  he  never  occu- 
pied a  pulpit.  We  rejoice  that  he  loves  a  joke 
and  can  tell  a  good  story ;  that  he  is  a  delightful 
host,  a  prize  as  a  guest,  and,  indeed,  always  com- 


[i3o] 

panionable  when  we  would  take  our  ease.  We 
rejoice  that  he  is  a  man  with  whom  it  is  a  delight 
to  talk  on  any  subject,  so  stimulating  is  his  reve- 
lation of  intellectual  power,  his  touch  with  the 
best  in  books  and  life,  and  his  sane  and  coura- 
geous judgment.  We  rejoice  that  we  have  a 
chief  with  whom  it  is  a  real  satisfaction  to  do 
business,  because  he  is  open  minded  to  the  pres- 
entation of  fact  and  argument  and  possesses  a 
grasp  of  sound  business  principles  and  a  common 
sense  rare  among  ministers,  or,  for  that  matter, 
in  any  class  of  the  community.  We  rejoice  that 
we  have  a  pastor  to  whom  we  can  go  with  our 
joys  and  aspirations,  with  our  griefs  and  troubles 
and  self-criticism,  sure  of  receiving  the  under- 
standing of  one  profound  in  his  knowledge  of 
human  nature,  and  also  of  receiving  that  sym- 
pathy and  wise  guidance  which  can  be  given 
only  by  one  who  has  a  high  faith  in  his  kind  and 
in  God's  righteousness  and  compassion. 

And  as  character  surpasses  power,  we  espe- 
cially rejoice  that  here  is  a  man  who  has  no 
thought  of  self-seeking  and  is  responsive  to  the 
subtlest  calls  of  honor.  This  is  of  peculiar  im- 
portance to  the  Old  South,  because  of  the  temp- 
tations to  sloth  and  extravagance  which  come  to 
us  from  Madame  Norton's  endowment  fund. 
From  my  own  knowledge  I  can  testify  that 
our  success  in  resisting  these  temptations  has 
been  greatly  furthered — yes — and  our  accepted 


[,3i] 

standards  as  to  what  is  temptation  raised  much 
higher  than  would  otherwise  be  possible,  be- 
cause Dr.  Gordon  keenly  appreciates  our  duty  in 
this  direction,  and  by  refusing  proffered  bene- 
fits for  himself  unselfishly  sets  us  a  good  ex- 
ample. This  may  not  be  one  of  the  great 
achievements  of  Dr.  Gordon,  but  it  surely  is 
of  a  quality  which  shows  the  character  of  the 
man. 

In  closing,  I  would  say  a  word  of  the  future. 
We  are  grateful  for  the  last  twenty-five  years' 
growth  of  the  Old  South  in  numbers,  power, 
and  usefulness,  and  for  the  leadership  which 
has  rendered  that  growth  possible.  But  I  for 
one  do  not  believe  that  this  anniversary  celebrates 
for  Dr.  Gordon  the  culmination  of  a  career,  or 
marks  for  the  Old  South  the  end  of  a  period 
of  progress.  To  me  it  is  remarkable  how  the 
preaching  of  our  minister  has  been  steadily  in- 
creasing in  power  and  effectiveness  since  he  was 
fifty,  and  the  sermon  here  is  but  the  mirror  of 
the  man.  If  a  man  can  so  continue  to  grow 
after  a  quarter  of  a  century,  there  is  no  reason 
why  an  organization  to  which  so  much  is  given 
as  to  our  church,  to  whose  standard  our  leader  is 
constantly  attracting  new  recruits  —  there  is  no 
reason  why  such  a  body  should  cease  to  advance 
unless  we  in  the  pews  relax  our  efforts.  And 
we  do  not  intend  to  relax.  On  the  contrary  we 
hereby  pledge  ourselves  to  a  service  more  earnest 


[i3a] 

and   devoted    than    ever   before.       Therefore,    I 
dare   prophesy  that  for    many  years    there   can 
fitly    be    applied    to    both    Dr.    Gor- 
don and    the  Old  South  the 
words    of    the    poet : 
"The  best  is  yet 
to   be." 


RETROSPECT    AND    PROSPECT 


DR.  GORDON  RESPONDED  TO  THE  TOAST,  "RETROSPECT 
AND  PROSPECT,"  IN  ACKNOWLEDGING  THE  TRIBUTES  PAID 
TO    HIM    BY    THE    PRECEDING    SPEAKERS 


DR.    GORDON'S   RESPONSE 

Mr.  Justice    Hammond,   Fellow  Members  of  the   Old  South  Club, 
Guests  of  the  Old  South  Church,  amd  Ladies  : 

THERE  is  a  premonitory  significance  in  this 
meeting,  as  if  it  were  a  rehearsal  of  a  com- 
ing professional  funeral.  I  have  myself 
frequently  assisted  at  similar  obsequies  during 
the  last  twenty-five  years,  and  now  my  time  has 
come,  as  it  comes  to  all.  On  such  occasions  I 
have  invariably  tried  to  tell  the  truth,  and  while 
I  must  confess  that  I  have  here  and  there  strained 
a  virtue  or  an  excellence,  I  have  cherished  the 
hope  that  I  might  be  forgiven  because  of  the 
tender  humanity  of  my  motive.  In  the  proceed- 
ings of  this  evening  I  see  a  similar  elevation  of 
purpose,  an  equal  humanity  issuing  in  a  more 
than  equal  tenderness  toward  my  work.  Of  the 
speakers  one  and  all,  misguided  as  they  have 
been,  I  say  with  Burns  : 

' '  But  yet  the  light  that  led  astray 
Was  light  from  heaven." 

You  cannot  quite  realize  my  pride  and  happiness 
in  hearing  my  former  teacher,  Professor  Palmer, 
speak  about  me  as  he  has  done  to-night.     When 


[.36] 

I  first  met  him,  and  during  the  year  in  which  I 
was  his  pupil,  I  always  met  him  with  a  Damascus 
blade  in  one  hand  and  a  laurel  wreath  in  the  other 
—  and  I  never  knew  whether  I  was  going  up  for 
coronation  or  decapitation  1  He  was  one  of  the 
two  completely  objective  examiners  I  ever  had, 
and  till  this  evening  I  always  felt  that  I  deserved 
all  that  I  got  from  Professor  Palmer.  I  have  a 
right  also  to  say  that  the  body  of  ideas  which  he 
brought  before  me,  both  by  incomparable  exposi- 
tion and  consistent  criticism,  has  been  with  me 
for  thirty-one  years,  the  foundation  of  all  my  think- 
ing and  intellectual  growth  since.  I  have  never 
had  an  opportunity  till  now  to  express  to  Professor 
Palmer  my  profound  and  affectionate  thanks. 

I  cannot  trust  myself  to  thank  Professor  Bliss 
Perry  for  his  golden  words.  I  see  in  them  less 
of  a  tribute  to  myself  and  more  of  a  master' s  con- 
fession of  the  kinship  between  literature  and  re- 
ligion, a  confession  too  by  one  who  is  both  man 
of  letters  and  speaker  of  the  transcendent  influ- 
ence upon  human  life  of  true  words  spoken  with 
sincerity  and  simplicity  and  the  pressure  behind 
them  of  a  noble  character.  In  the  light  of  his  su- 
perb testimony  we  preachers  see  our  calling  with 
the  halo  encircling  it  that  belongs  to  it  by  divine 
right.  For  this  testimony  we  render  Professor 
Perry  our  thanks  and  honor. 

What  shall  I  say  in  your  name  and  my  own  to 
Doctor  de  Normandie  for  his  noble  greeting  ?    He 


[i37] 

has  brought  us  an  expression  of  the  sympathy  and 
good-will  of  our  sister  churches  in  Boston  ;  no  man 
among  us  is  better  fitted  for  that  function  ;  he  is 
himself  the  embodiment  of  affectionate  and  chival- 
rous regard  for  his  fellow-ministers  and  his  fellow- 
Christians.  I  say  to  him,  for  myself  and  for  you, 
that  we  are  happier  because  of  his  presence  with 
us,  as  the  religious  life  of  our  city  is  richer  be- 
cause of  the  sincerity  and  purity  of  his  spirit. 

The  next  speaker  represented  the  Old  South 
Society.  He  must  allow  me  to  use  him  as  a  sym- 
bol of  that  society.  Both  Mr.  Morse,  the  chair- 
man of  the  standing  committee,  and  Mr.  Edward 
G.  Johnson,  the  treasurer,  represent  in  their  de- 
voted and  able  services  the  genius  of  the  Old 
South  Society.  More  than  thirty  years  ago  the 
Supreme  Court  of  Massachusetts  recognized  that 
the  trust  of  the  Society  was  a  trust  ideally  admin- 
istered. From  the  beginning  of  my  ministry  here 
I  have  watched  the  administration  of  this  trust 
with  grateful  admiration.  By  all  the  members 
of  the  standing  committee  and  by  members  of 
the  Society  on  many  other  committees  time  and 
service  have  been  largely  and  freely  given  with 
no  thought  of  compensation,  from  no  other  mo- 
tive than  pride  and  joy  in  the  ever-extending 
good  influence  of  the  Society.  It  would  be  a 
painful  embarrassment  to  me  if  I  were  not  allowed 
at  this  time  to  express  my  thanks  and  my  obliga- 
tions to  the  Old  South  Society. 


[,38] 

The  ministry  that  has  been  so  magnificently 
praised  here  this  evening  is  not  mine  alone  or 
mainly.  For  nearly  eight  years  I  have  been  sup- 
ported by  the  assistant  minister  of  the  church, 
Dr.  Allen  E.  Gross,  a  brilliant  mind,  a  willing 
servant,  a  devoted  friend;  and  during  the  present 
year  I  have  had  the  noble  help  of  the  minister's 
assistant,  Rev.  Warren  S.  Archibald.  No  minister 
ever  had  more  efficient  officers  than  I  have  had  ; 
no  minister  to-day  in  the  whole  country  owes 
more  to  his  officers  than  I  do  to  the  six  officers  at 
present  serving  the  Old  South  Church. 

The  work  organized  and  carried  forward  by  the 
women  of  the  church  is  in  itself  a  special  distinc- 
tion. Without  that  work  we  should  be  poor 
indeed  ;  without  it  the  merciful  humanities  of 
the  church  would  languish,  its  devotional  spirit 
would  be  distinctly  less,  and  the  social  fellowship 
in  which  we  rejoice  would  be  greatly  reduced. 
In  the  Old  South  Church  from  the  beginning  the 
women  have  played  a  noble  part ;  their  work  has 
been  hidden  but  none  the  less  important,  like  the 
mainspring  in  the  watch.  For  that  hidden  power, 
that  modest  but  potent  influence,  that  gentle  but 
inspiring  force,  we  return  thanks  and  honor. 

We  have  the  Old  South  Club,  from  whose 
President  we  have  heard  this  evening,  a  club 
numbering  more  than  one  hundred  and  seventy 
members,  a  club  in  full  sympathy  with  the  reli- 
gious purpose  of  the  church,  and  while  pursuing 


[*39] 
literary  and  social  ends,    reaching  out  in  these 
days  toward  ends  of  social  reform.      We  have  a 
great  parish,  united,  enthusiastic,  seeking  to  serve 
this  community,  proud  of  a  church  two  hundred 
and  forty  years  old,  with  men  and  women  happy 
to  be  in  the  church  in  which  Benjamin  Franklin 
was  baptized,  in  which  Samuel  Adams  was  a  com- 
municant, in  which  the  great  voices  of  the  Revolu- 
tion rang ;   a  church  whose  history  more  than  that 
of  any  other  in  the  city  has  been  identified  with 
the  character,  ideals,  and  hopes  and  patriotism  of 
the  community.     These  men  and  these  women 
have  helped  mightily  to  produce  this  ministry,  and 
I  divide  with  them  the  honor  of  the  evening. 

Overestimation,    undue    devotion    gives    acute 
pain,  therefore  I  give  you,  my  people,  back  more 
than  half  of  what  you  have  given  me.     It  belongs 
to  you ;  besides,  in  dealing  justly  I  give  one  sub- 
stantial sign  of  retaining,  what  Judge  Hammond 
hoped  I  might  retain,  a  level  head.     Macaulay 
on  one  occasion  said  that  he  did  not  feel  intoxi- 
cated by  his  success,  but  added  the  discreet  re- 
mark that  a  man  may  be  drunk  and  not  know  it. 
So  far  I  am  conscious  of  no  intoxication,  whether 
warranted  in  that  feeling  or  not.     I  will  tell  you 
why  I  think  I  am  immune.     The  theologians  tell 
us  there  is  such   a  thing  as  prevenient   grace  — 
which  does  not  effect  regeneration,   but  goes  a 
good  way  toward  it.      Now  I  had  my  prevenient 
grace  from  an  austere  and  noble  father.     When 


[i4o] 

I  went  forth  to  seek  my  livelihood,  at  the  age  of 
eleven,  my  father  told  me  with  such  emphasis 
and  sincerity  as  to  leave  in  my  mind  no  room  for 
doubt,  that  I  was  below  the  average  in  ability 
and  that  my  only  salvation  was  in  honest,  steady 
work !  And  so  deeply  did  his  gospel  go  into  my 
nature  that  when  I  went  home  from  the  meeting 
last  Monday  evening  his  words  came  back  to  me 
over  the  expanse  of  five  and  forty  years  with  in- 
expressible tenderness  and  power.  And  that  great 
meeting  seemed  to  me  a  dream,  wholly  beautiful 
and  wholly  incredible !  And  yet  a  dream  may 
serve  a  great  purpose.  A  man  certainly  no  better 
than  I  went  out  once  on  a  long  journey  and  came 
to  a  solitary  place  and  laid  himself  down  to  sleep 
and  dreamed  a  dream  of  a  ladder  which  reached 
from  the  stone  on  which  he  laid  his  head  to  heaven. 
On  that  ladder  the  angels  of  God  ascended  and 
descended.  He  awoke  and  knew  it  was  a  dream, 
and  yet  he  awoke  with  the  feeling,  new  in  him, 
of  a  great  intention  in  his  life,  with  the  feeling 
that  God  was  in  that  place,  though  he  knew  it 
not,  and  with  the  further  feeling  of  awe  and  regret 
and  hope  —  all  in  consequence  of  that  dream ! 

And  the  dream  in  which  I  have  been  living, 
wholly  beautiful,  wholly  incredible,  for  the  last 
week  —  dream  as  it  is  —  has  given  me  a  new  sense 
of  the  intention  of  my  existence,  of  its  significance 
for  my  fellow-men ;  a  new  sense  of  God  in  the 
world  —  Immanuel — a  new  awe,  a  new  regret, 


[i4i] 

a  new  hope !  A  little  book  was  put  into  my  hands 
last  Monday  afternoon  which  absolutely  over- 
whelmed me.  I  refer  not  now  to  the  gift  —  a 
gift  in  anticipation  of  the  time,  perhaps,  when  I 
can  no  longer  earn  my  bread,  a  gift  with  a  sweet 
and  pious  reference  to  the  future,  a  gift  with  a  reli- 
gious beauty  in  it  to  which  I  can  make  no  further 
reference  now  —  but  the  Book  itself  with  five 
hundred  and  fifty  names,  young  men  and  maidens, 
old  men  and  little  children,  and  others  under  the 
burden  and  heat  of  the  day,  a  Book  that  shall  be 
an  everlasting  memorial,  whose  names  shall  be 
engraven  on  the  tablets  of  my  heart  forever — a 
precious  Volume,  that,  when  the  inevitable  even- 
ing comes,  shall  be  a  gracious  fulfillment  of  the 
promise,  "At  evening-time  there  shall  be  light"  ; 
that  Book  is  part  of  the  great  dream  in  which  I 
have  been  living  and  meeting  God  in  the  human- 
ity of  my  people. 

A  minister  lives  for  his  generation.  There 
have  been  fifteen  ministers  of  the  Old  South  pre- 
ceding me.  From  Mr.  Thatcher  to  my  immediate 
predecessor,  Dr.  Manning,  fifteen  ministers  have 
had  their  distinct  congregations ;  and  I  love  to 
think  of  them  in  that  world  of  light  whither  they 
have  gone,  with  those  to  whom  they  broke  the 
"bread  of  life"  here,  surrounding  them  there, 
together,  swelling  the  richness  of  that  mysterious 
existence  upon  which  they  have  entered.  We  are 
traveling  the  same  path.      Others  will  fill  your 


[Ifa] 

places  and  another  will  soon  fill  mine:  but  the 
richness  of  our  fellowship  is  forever,  and  I  open  my 
life  to  your  love  and  your  confidence,  and  I  give 
you  back  mine  without  limit,  without  bound! 

Many  warm  hearts  have  wished  me  another 
twenty-five  years  of  service  here.  I  indulge  in 
no  sanguine  hopes  for  the  future.  I  should  like 
to  serve  for  a  few  years  more  if  God  will.  For 
any  minister  even  among  the  best  of  friends  the 
Old  South  Church  must  be  a  great  burden.  I 
remember  when  I  came  to  this  country  first  I 
dropped  into  a  safe  factory  and  I  worked  with  a 
good-natured  Irishman,  whose  name  was  John 
(I  never  knew  the  other  part  of  his  name) .  John 
was  always  looking  for  a  soft  job.  If  there  was 
a  piece  of  iron  to  be  lifted,  I  had  to  lift  more  than 
half  every  time.  But  he  was  good-natured  and 
a  good  friend.  I  did  not  see  him  for  thirteen 
years.  After  my  settlement  at  the  Old  South 
Church  I  was  walking  down  Boylston  Street  and 
saw  him  working  in  a  doorway,  and  I  said,  ' '  John, 
do  you  know  me  ?  "  "  Know  you  ?  "  —  I  will  not 
quote  literally — "I  would  know  you  anywhere. 
Och!  but  it's  a  soft  job  you've  got  now  !  "  That 
is  the  popular  impression  ;  I  think  a  good  many 
of  my  brethren  have  thought  so.  I  would  like 
as  many  of  these  men  as  might  be  to  become  my 
successors ;  that  I  think  would  lead  them  to  a 
change  of  heart. 

When  I  came  to  Boston  Phillips  Brooks  was 


[i/13] 

preaching  at  the  height  of  his  power  in  Trinity 
Church ;  Dr.  Duryea,  a  strong  man,  was  in 
Central  Church;  Dr.  Herrick,  one  of  the  most 
accomplished  preachers  our  body  ever  had,  was 
atMt.  Vernon  Church;  James  Freeman  Clarke,  a 
preacher  and  a  writer  of  national  repute,  was 
in  the  Church  of  the  Disciples ;  Edward  Everett 
Hale  was  in  the  South  Church,  Brook  Hereford 
was  the  popular  minister  of  Arlington  Street 
Church,  Henry  Foote  was  the  King's  Chapel 
Saint,  and  other  men  not  unworthy  to  be  named 
with  these  filled  other  pulpits  of  the  city ;  and  I 
a  stripling  of  thirty-one  appeared  among  these 
sons  of  the  prophets !  Was  it  a  soft  job  ?  I 
began  my  ministry  in  an  environment  charged 
with  the  intensest  and  noblest  kind  of  hostility, 
that  inspired  by  the  fear  lest  evil  might  befall 
precious  interests  of  the  human  spirit,  and  in  this 
environment  the  task  assigned  me  was  called  ■ '  a 
soft  job."  I  never  thought  of  it  that  way.  I 
thought  of  it  as  stern  duty,  as  holding  more  work 
than  I  could  do  if  I  had  been  as  strong  as  Sam- 
son ;  I  felt  the  grind  year  in  and  year  out ;  I  felt 
the  isolation,  almost  desolation,  with  hardly  a  song 
bird  to  be  heard  anywhere,  except  the  sweet  voices 
of  love  and  cheer  that  rang  inside  the  Old  South 
Church ;  and  all  that  for  ten  hard  and  great  years. 
I  am  thankful  for  them.  I  would  go  through 
them  again  to  gain  what  they  brought.  They 
did  me  a  world  of  good  ;   they  did  much  to  shake 


out  the  chaff  from  character,  from  faith,  and  from 
the  objects  of  desire;  they  did  much  to  increase 
within  me  the  sense  of  what  manhood  is,  life, 
service,  God,  and  hope!  This  kind  of  warfare 
is  great,  but  it  inclines  one  who  has  been  in  it 
for  twenty-five  years  to  readiness  to  lay  down 
the  sword  when  the  strength  to  wield  it  shall 
no  longer  remain.  Against  that  day  I  hope  I 
shall  be  ever  in  the  watch  tower. 

And  now,  dear  friends,  I  must  not  prolong 
these  remarks.  Let  me  thank  the  eminent  men 
who  have  done  us  the  honor  to  come  hither  as 
our  guests.  They  have  brought  us  inspiration, 
they  have  greatened  our  sense  of  self-respect. 
Let  me  thank  again  and  from  my  heart  the 
speakers  for  what  they  have  said.  I  do  not 
believe  their  description  of  me,  but  I  receive  their 
good-will  and  their  love  with  utmost  thanks. 

Let  me  thank  you  one  and  all  for  this  affecting 
expression  of  confidence  and  regard,  let  me  con- 
tinue to  be  your  friend  and  servant  as  I  can  and 
as  I  may ;  let  us  together  seek  the  fresh  dedi- 
cation of  the  Old  South  Church  to  the 
sovereign  interests  of  this  commu- 
nity, and  let  us  look  to  God 
for  a  higher  wisdom 
and  a  diviner 
spirit. 


OLD    SOUTH    CHURCH 

The    REV.   GEORGE    A.    GORDON,    D.D.,    Minister 
The  Rev.  Allen    E.  Gross,  D.D.,  Assistant  Minister 
The  Rev.  Warren  S.  Archibald,  Minister's  Assistant 

Deacons 

Arthur  S.  Johnson  Lewis  A.  Crossett 

William  L.   McKee  William  F.   Whittemore 

George  P.  Morris  Herbert  D.  Heathfield 

Clerk:  J.  Converse  Gray 

Church  Committee 

The  Minister,  Assistant  Minister,  Deacons 

Clerk  of  the  Church 

Richard  H.  Stearns         William  H.  Robey,  Jr. 
Frank  W.  Hunt  J.  Howard  Leman 

George  W.  Merrill  Henrt  A.  Guiler 

Richard  H.  Stearns,  Jr.        William  H.  Hitchcock 

Superintendent  of  Sunday  School :  Richard  H.  Stearns,  Jr. 
Asst.  Supt.  of  Sunday  School :  John  Gordon 

OLD   SOUTH   SOCIETY   IN   BOSTON 

Standing  Committee 

John  Wells  Morss,  Chairman 

William  H.  Pitkin  J.  Converse  Gray 

Wolcott  H.  Johnson  Edward  R.  Rayley 

George  H.  Davenport  Alpheus  H.  Hardy 

Samuel  Carr 

Treasurer:  Edward  C.  Johnson 
Clerk:  George  W.  Merrill 


Date  Due 

I 
i 

1 

f) 

